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

Fingernails...and toenails.

[The joke was sort of lost on Rey, but she sort of understood where Alex was going with this? A way for her to make her nails look...nicer? But, they were clean and trimmed--why put paint on them?

And what exactly would be done to her?]

You're going to have to go over this a bit more in depth with me later. Spas were never talked about on Jakku.

Oh yeah, of course. That's one of the reasons I planned to go with you, so you'd know that everything was safe and the like. That they wouldn't do anything to hurt you. A spa is supposed to make you feel good and fresh like a newborn baby. Not that there's anything wrong with how you are now, I just thought you might like to have someone take care of you for a change, instead of taking care of yourself or everyone else.

[Alex's smile is warm and earnest, because she means it. Rey doesn't get the chance to pamper herself enough, as far as the reporter is aware. And she wants her to have that time and take that chance.]

[That's a phrase she hasn't heard before, "fresh like a newborn baby." What did that even mean? She was thinking too hard about it, but it was a weird expression!]

I don't know...I've never had someone take care of me if I'm able to do it on my own. I mean...having a hot bath is more than enough for me.

[she always felt so much better after a hot bath to herself, but she tried not to over indulge on that.]

It's not as if you can't do it on your own! I mean everyone knows how capable you are, Rey. And strong. And independant. This is just letting someone else take care of you for a little while. It's like taking the best hot bath you've ever had in your life. It works out all the kinks and little hurts in your muscles, and just seriously makes you feel good. I swear.

[...Well, Poe and Cisco brought it up that she had to learn to have others take care of her. Granted the 'others' involved were her friends, not complete strangers.

...And what are compliments?]

I believe you. I'll keep an open mind about it, but when did you want to try this out?

I can do it whenever, I've got a pretty open schedule at work at the moment.

[Big stories tend to do that, she's discovered, at least here. She's still working of course, just not as hard as she did last month.]

The gift certificate is good for six months so sometime within that would be good.

[There's a smile in her voice as she says it.]

Six months? [Rey was genuinely surprised at that. Then again, she didn't exactly think gift-certificates would go for that long. Maybe a month or so, but six months?]

Oh yeah, plenty of time to figure things out then. But, maybe do it sooner rather than later? [In case they both get bogged down with work or things happen.]

And, if you want, you could come by my place tonight and I can give you your gift then, if that works?

Yeah, six months. I think it's so long so that they hope that people will forget that someone paid for it and then they don't need to actually you know, provide the services that someone paid for. [It wasn't that Alex had done it more than a few times in the past, it was that Alex had actually done it a lot in the past. Even cleaning out her bag here she'd found gift cards for several restaurants and bookstores back home that had probably been sitting there since her last birthday.]

Sooner is definitely good. It's sandal weather, and I would like my toes to look in tip-top shape. [Granted, Alex was already wearing said strawberry sandals, but it didn't hurt to have them cleaned up anyway.]

Sure, I could do that! Do you want to grab coffee or dinner or something before then? I mean since it's on the way anyway.

[...Uhhh...since when did fashion start to dictate the weather? And sandals? That wasn't the most protective thing out there.

Then again, heels were made for woman's butts to look nice even if they hurt like hell. It's another world for Rey to learn, but at least Lola sort of helped with preparing for this...kind of.]

Maybe in two weeks then? That should be fine, right? [It's sooner than a month from now, and gives them time to adjust things if need be.]

We could get dinner, sure. Are you hungry right now?

[It happened when a girl from Vancouver moved to Seattle and they had the same climate of being chilly and rainy all the time. Alex wasn't used to having this much sun around her, so she was going to take advantage of it to the best of her abilities. After all, she may end up in Brazil and it was better to be used to the heat than not to be. Besides, the sundresses and sandals she was wearing suited her quite a bit.

A grin followed the mention of the spa in two weeks, and Alex lightly bumped Rey with her arm.]

As long as it's not a ploy to get out of it! [It's clear that Alex is teasing, and she just nods about dinner.]

We could get noodles, they're nearby and they're the best.

[There's a small laugh from Rey who shakes her head at Alex. No, it wasn't a ploy. She was actually going to through with this--how long Rey would last is anyone's guess.]

Noodles? Like...pasta or are you thinking something else?

[Not that she had any issues with is, just curious. Noodle can mean a lot of things--as she come to find out by staying here for....so many months.]

Lead the way.

Actually, back home noodles were from one part of the planet that bought it to Italy who turned it into bottles. They were originally asian, and as much as I like a good spaghetti as anyone else, these ones are different and sometimes better. They come with veggies and meat and sauce that's a little bit spicy if you like it...

[Don't let Alex tiny Candianness fool ya. She definitely is someone who likes things hot after so long of living in Seattle.]

Pasta turned into bottles? I don't understand.

[Rey is just going to try and understand as best as she can as Alex seems to list things off. Either way, having veggies and meat with noodles sounds like a good idea. She can already start to feel the beginnings of hunger grumbling in her stomach.]

Spicy is fine? I haven't had too many spicy things before, but I can try.

[Alex just looked embarrassed for a moment, and she slapped her hand across her lips as if it could force the word soup that had just come from her lips back inside of them.]

Oh my gowd, [she murmured quickly, her cheeks coloring.] I can't believe I said that. I don't even know where it came from. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you. Or my brain either, I guess. But yeah, they turned noodles into pasta by adding the local wheat rather than the rice that a lot of Asian countries used. The place I like is rice noodles, and don't worry, we can definitely ask them not to make it too spicy for you.

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monthly mingle: PRIJATA

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