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

[ Definitely complicated. ]

And that wasn't difficult for you?

[ Most men, at least the ones Dorian ever knew in passing balked at the idea. John was good with kids . . . sort of. At times. But Dorian knew he wasn't comfortable with them. ]

It was more difficult for her. I didn't exactly cause a great first impression.

[ He sighs, shrugging as he looks at a picture of the three of them together. ]

It was... weird. I'm not exactly used to dealing with kids. But I liked Victor a lot, and I wanted things to work out between us. So, from that perspective... no, it wasn't all that difficult. It just took a bit of work.

I'm glad it worked out.

[ breq calls him cousin, but dorian hasn't parsed that fully yet. what does a family even feel like? ]

I don't have a frame of reference for families.

[ Jim musters a weak chuckle at that. ] Neither did I, actually.

[ He reaches for a small hexagonal base from a table nearby. When he clicks a button on the side, a hologram of a happy young couple pops up. ]

My dad died the day I was born. My mom was hardly ever around. Can't say I had a great family life, while growing up. I'm... mostly just playing it by ear, and hoping I get it right.

[ Dorian has very little filter. He has some social standards, but he tends to follow his curiosity over anything else. ]

Do you want your own?

[ Luckily Jim's not the type to mind. If he didn't want to talk about it then he wouldn't have mentioned his parents, nor shown Dorian a picture of them. ]

For a long time I didn't. Thought it just didn't fit the sort of life I had. Traveling around all the time, never settling down anywhere. [ He smiles a hint. ] One of my helmsmen is married, has a kid and all. It's... a sacrifice. Sometimes he'll go months without seeing his husband, or his baby girl. Besides, nothing was ever as important as my work before.

But... it's different, now. Or here, at least. I think... I do have a family now, with Victor and Lucy.

[ For once Dorian doesn't bring up the doubts that must be there. If people have to go, for instance. It does no one any favors to think about the future in that way. Instead he changes the topic. ]

Someone here calls me "cousin". It's . . . pleasant but strange.

Really? [ His eyebrows raise while he glances at Dorian. ] Why? Are they an android too, or did you just make an impression?

We are very similar in the way we think and feel for ourselves and our way of learning.

[ Dorian hesitates. ]

But I think they're very angry. Bitter at mankind. And sometimes I think they want me to be as well. People are kind to me here, but . . . they weren't always.

[ He hums thoughtfully, nodding in understanding. ]

I always think that's very broad. Don't you? Being angry at one entire species. There are... billions of humans, possibly more depending on the universe. Each individual is different from the other. We don't all think the same, feel the same, or do the same. Like you said— some people aren't as kind as others, but that's true just about anywhere, for just about anyone.

[ It doesn't take being different to understand that, and know how it feels. Even humans know how other people from their own species can be mean, cruel, unkind. ]

I can't blame them. Humans have treated me broadly as well. I'm the last of . . . my kind, so to speak. They'll never replicate the synthetic soul again.

[ A pause. ]

But I can't feel that anger.

[ Jim already knew that, of course. It's both bad and good, in different ways. Sad to think that Dorian is more or less alone in his world, at least when it comes to having others like him around. But it also means he is unique. No one, nothing will ever be like him.

From then on it's only a matter of humans learning to value that. A few do already, he thinks. The people Dorian works with. John, at the very least. ]

I'm glad. Anger is... like an acid. I've seen what it does to people. [ His smile falters. ] It's no use clinging to it. You can do so much better by giving people a chance.

[ Dorian's never been angry. Frustrated, sure. Annoyed, but not angry. Not even at his creator. ]

I just — I worry. For people like me who feel that way.

I understand.

[ Doesn't take being an android to know how dangerous that can get, when people get really angry, to the point of taking extreme measures. Humans are very much capable of that, too. ]

But you can still try to be a good example, to them. Here, back home— doesn't matter. You can do the right thing, and hope to inspire people. That's what I always aim to do.

[ Dorian chuckles. ]

Me, an example? That's a little far-fetched, don't you think?

[ He raises his eyebrows, tilting his head at Dorian. ]

Why?

Why?

[ Dorian repeats that, baffled. ]

I'm a cop. I just want to be a cop.

And you don't think that's a good example?

[ He's the one chuckling now. ]

You want to do good, to help people. You don't care if they're human or android, or something else entirely. If someone treats you poorly, or is unkind to you, it won't turn you against the rest of us. You understand that people aren't all the same. And... some people still need to learn that, androids or otherwise.

You can always be a good role model. It doesn't matter what you want to be, or what you want to do for the rest of your life.

That's . . . very inspirational.

[ And a little strong, Jim plz. ]

[ He can get very intense. Dorian will get used to it eventually. ]

Thank you. I was hoping it would be.

,small>[ Dorian chuckles. ]

But it really sounds like you than me, man.

[ A shrug. ] I don't know why it can't sound like you, too. Don't you want to help people, or do what's right?

Of course I do.

But the scale you're imagining is huge.

No— I'm not imagining any scale. I'm not saying you have to change the world or anything like that. I'm saying you can cause a good impression, be a good influence, and that's wonderful. It's important, even on just a small handful of people— even on just one person.

[ He smiles, despite himself. ]

That still sounds huge to me. I mean, it's why I want to be a cop. But still.

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