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

navigation

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Not much of one, I'm afraid.

[Though, Steve probably shouldn't go around sniffing strange plants, but it's nice to have another friend who enjoys flowers as much as her.]

But I'm sure she was delighted with them--I couldn't do that. There's not much soil, or water. I have a few though--some that are... [What was the word?] Succulents? They're really pretty. [And don't need much water, which is a nice bonus.]

I don't have any plans. [She wouldn't mind, but she's a bit...concerned that he may not like it. That's a normal reaction though, right?

As for a rain check, there's a shake of her head as she starts to walk with him back to her place.]

It's fine. I wasn't expecting anything in return. [Because it's something she's used to. Getting gifts in return was a delight for her, but always a surprised.]

[He doesn't seem too bothered by the lack of scent. After all, if there's one thing he'd learned about flowers from growing up with his mother's make-shift garden, it's that a lot of nice smelling flowers, when mixed together can create a powerful and displeasing smell. And allergies. He'd had a lot of allergies.]

That's right. Where you grew up was more like a desert right? It's incredible that any type of flower could remain alive in that sort of climate. They'd have to be really tough. [Which, he thinks, suits Rey completely.]

I don't mean to imply that you expected anything. [He falls in alongside her, following her to her place.] I just think a gift exchange is a little lacking if it's only being exchanged on one side. But I'm honored and a little surprised you thought of me at all. [He smiles, feeling slightly self-conscious.]

Mmhmm. Jakku was a desert, but it wasn't always that way. Just like it didn't always have ships scattered about in the sands.

[Which was sometimes hard to believe. She heard stories about it before, but there was barely anything that wasn't covered in sand or dust. Seeing plants like the one she had now, it was rare for her to find, but just as Steve said, those plants were tough...and they were pretty too.]

Well, we have been talking a lot--especially about food, and thought you could use something to help you with that. [And to Steve's point, he wasn't expecting anything from her. So, really, the gift exchange was purposefully one-sided for Rey, and she really didn't mind. She didn't mean to make him feel self conscious--and he didn't have to go and get her anything because of it.]

Unless, you want to keep ordering out, then by all means. [Teasing, just a little.]

What was it before it was a desert?

[It feels right for him to reciprocate a gift for a gift. It's not going to be just anything though. A gift worth giving is one that has thought put into it. Whatever he gets for her in return has to be right.]

To help me...? Like what?

[He shakes his head.]

I'll take whatever help I can get.

Not a desert. I think it had more green on it before, but that could've been...decades, maybe centuries ago.

[There's a shrug of her shoulders. She really wouldn't know, but she's heard chatter about it in the past.]

Help you cook. You did say you were bad at it, right? [Slow cookers were easy to deal with, and as long as he remembered to leave it on at the right temperature, then everything would be fine. He didn't need to get her anything, though. She was fine with nothing--his friendship was more than enough.]

In that case, I could look for a cookbook for you, if you want.

Long before your time. Do you know it became the way it is now? I mean, clearly everything dried up, but do you know why?

[It's not every day he gets to hear about the history of another planet, so he can't help but be curious.]

Yeah, I did say that. And I believe you also agreed to help teach me a few tricks.

[He grins.]

A cookbook would be great, actually. You don't need to trouble yourself about it though. I'm sure I can find one.

Heard stories. It was under the control of another group, and it was drained of its resources.

[There was a shrug of her shoulders as they continued to walk to her apartment. It wasn't too far to go.]

It was also part of a battle between the Empire and the Rebellion and that's how so many ships from both sides ended up on the planet.

[It's a long story, one Rey wouldn't mind going over with Steve about sometime.]

Well, we can both look. How's that? Better odds, I'd think and if you wind up with two cookbooks then it only benefits you. [Smiling a little.]

[He can sense a deeper story there, but he's not sure now is the time to dwell on it. But he is curious about her world and learning more about it. In time.]

Sounds like it turned into a graveyard. For the ships at least.

[And likely for the people inside them too. But it seems a little harsh to emphasis that. It's Rey's home planet after all. She would know better then he.]

Any option that means more food for me is beneficial. But I'm really curious now what you got me. Are we almost to your place?

That's how a lot of people consider it to be; a graveyard. Others call it a junk planet.

[There's a shrug of her shoulders because she really doesn't take any offense to it. It wasn't her home, not anymore. Though, it's hard to say where her home was back in her world. Those were the things she tried to push back to the edges of her mind.]

We're not too far. It's this building, actually.

[They had walked towards the river. It was cleaned up for the most part from the flood that happened a while ago. She lets both of them in, heading up a few floors until they're at her place. It's a studio apartment. There wasn't much around, but it was nice. It was hers--and much better after she had the chance to clean it.

There were a few plants around to help liven the place up. She gestures for him to come inside. Further in the back is her bed and next to it after a few gifts already wrapped.]

Just give me a moment...

[She leaves his side and comes back with a box that's all nicely wrapped.]

Here we are.

[He inspects the apartment curiously as Rey retrieves his gift. It seems clean and put together, if a little sparse, not unlike his own room at the Community Housing building. The plants scattered around are a nice touch that he's not surprised by. Perhaps it's even giving him an idea about what kind of gift he should get her in return...

When she approaches, with the box in hand, he accepts it carefully, surprised by its size.]

Should I open it here?

[He knows that some like to watch as their presents are opened and received, but he doesn't want to make a mess in her space without asking first.]

If you want to? It's up to you...I was going to just drop it by your place.

[It's up to Steve, she wasn't going to put him on the spot and make him open it right then and there. It's his gift to do with as he pleased.]

I mean...you can do what you would like with it. You don't need to open here if you don't want to.

[He nods. Sometimes he knows that people prefer to witness their gifts being open by the recipient, but since Rey doesn't seem to have that preference he decides to leave it for later.]

Thank you again. I really appreciate the thought you put into this.

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monthly mingle: PRIJATA

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