riverviewlogs | monthly mingle: CARNIVALE

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: monthly mingle: carnivale
when: the month of july
where: anywhere around the city
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

carnivale

In the days leading up to July 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: Carnivale. This holiday is in celebration of music, and the onset of summer and warmer weather. The celebrations are marked by street parties, an extensive program of live musical performances, with two large parades on July 8th and July 9th.

celebrating music, and summer

After a couple of months of low-key or even solemn celebrations, it's time for Riverview Quarantine to throw a good, old-fashioned party. Carnivale is a city-wide festival that pretty much everyone gets into, and many residents take the entire week off so they can enjoy all the festivities. With events ranging from impromptu street parties, free live musical performances, food stands, themed club nights, adult lounges with kink shows, and topped off with two massive party parades, the holiday has a lot to offer for anyone who likes to sing, dance, and show some skin!

i. street parties and food

One of the staples of the Carnivale festival is the spontaneous street parties and food trucks and carts. It's not unusual during the holiday to turn a corner and run into a group of people dressed in bright colors and sequins having an impromptu party with a few drinks, and then be invited to join right in! Carnivale is a celebration of music as well as summer, so most shops and stalls will be blasting danceable music into the streets to facilitate these little street parties - it's considered a sign of good luck for the owner of a business if an impromptu Carnivale celebration starts up in front of their door.

Considering the proliferation of street parties and people out and about to celebrate the warmer weather, local business owners also take to the streets. Food carts, stands, and trucks pop up on almost every street corner offering a wide variety of food from savory treats to sweet desserts. Many of the carts are offering one free item to anyone dressed up for Carnivale - anything shimmery, shiny, or brightly colored will do!

ii. live musical performances

One of the major roads in the city center has been completely roped off for the entire week, and all along this street, various temporary stages have been set up, each with a nice hefty sound system. Volunteers hand out printed flyers, and digital boards are set up here and there with schedules of various performances that are all free to attend, ranging from well-known popular music artists to new up-and-comers or independent artists who are looking to make a name for themselves. This event is very widely advertised around the city, and is accepting entries until the very last minute.

So jump in and stomp around in a mosh pit or just dance around in the streets, let yourself get lost in the music and the summer heat!

Any player-characters who are musically inclined are more than welcome to assume their character was fit in for a performance, and can post up a top-level with a rundown of their performance to get bonus Activity Points for posting a mingle!

iii. carnivale parade and children's parade

The other main attraction of Carnivale week comes on the weekend of July 8th and 9th, which are paid holiday days for everyone in the city. There are two parades, the Carnivale Parade on July 8th, and the Children's Parade on July 9th.

Both parades will start out by City Hall and wind through downtown in a lazy pattern so everyone in the city has a chance to see them. There will be all sorts of floats, dancers, marching bands, with all sorts of clubs, businesses, and other organizations represented. Observers can expect great music, excellent dancing and marching shows, neat vehicles provided by classic car clubs, the fire, police, and Perimeter Guard. They can also expect a lot of party favors, whether it's a sparkly plastic beaded necklace, a fan to take the edge off the heat, candy, popsicles, a temporary tattoo, or any number of other little treats or toys to be tossed into the crowd.

The Carnivale Parade on Saturday has a more adult tone to it, and party favors thrown may be toys or gag gifts of a more adult nature suitable for older teens and grown-ups. The floats are more risqué and the people in the parade show more skin, dance more provocatively, and there are wet T-shirts, occasional flashing, and other things that might not be suitable for children. The theme is theatrical, big and showy, bright and colorful, sparkly and shiny, with loud music and lots of glitz and glamour.

Geared toward children and younger teens, the Children's Parade is on Sunday and generally more low-key, with more of a cartoony than glitzy theme. The Children's Parade will have more conservative floats, with bright colors, juggling and dancing, and mascot costumes. Party favors will lean more toward candy and temporary tattoos, rainbow pinwheels, and small toys. Keep an eye out for floats with pop performers and for popular cartoons in the city!

And make sure you wear your waterproof mascara - Carnivale and Children's Parade floats have a tendency of spraying or spritzing water, both in an unspoken competition to see who can make the biggest water-refraction rainbow in the air, and to keep observers cool in the new summer heat.

iv. adult: lounges

Thanks to the Carnivale tradition of showing as much skin as possible, some event organizers' minds have turned to topics of a more adult nature. In the evenings, residents may see clubs doing "lounge nights"; these adults-only events have bouncers IDing everyone at the door to ensure they're 18+. The themes may vary, from very specific niche themes like 'golden age superheroes' to broad themes like 'rainbows,' and each event is clearly marked as what it is - all-nude or clothing-optional, and can host events ranging from amateur to professional exotic dancing, food served off of nude bodies, anonymous masked hookups, or just provide a comfortable space where casual sex is encouraged with whoever happens to be around. Various legal substances can be found at these lounges, but nothing that would cause violation of consent, and every substance would be clearly labeled and have warnings to ensure that no one partakes unless they choose to. Please be sure to warn in the subject line for sexual content or drug use (since some mild party drugs are legal in Riverview).

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 Carnivale, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: Roger Patterson Jr.; image ii: Jie He; image iii: Aaron Walker; image iv: Lewis Monson

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A winged jetpack.

[Suddenly the pattern does indeed make sense. The next few feathers Breq adds to Sam's arm might just end up more stylized, a bit more metallic looking in the finished product.]

Between the suit of armor and the magic, this place is full of surprises.

Oh, you've met Tony? [Sam gives her a slightly wry smile. It seems like Tony has a growing reputation in Riverview.] He's actually the one who designed my jetpack.

Magic, though, I gotta agree with you on that one. We don't have it back home; it's just in stories.

We've worked together.

[Her gesture has the paintbrush swooping in a graceful arc, one that fortunately doesn't splatter paint anywhere.]

He mentioned having crafted his armor himself. He must have quite the repertoire. As for magic-- technologies that seem impossible, I can account for. And there are always stories of the occult being whispered. But natural abilities to manipulate energy...

We have a writer back home who had this saying, any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But there's nothing that works the other way around.

[Sorry for mangling your law, Mr. Clarke.]

But I have a friend [okay, boyfriend] who's a sorcerer, and the stuff he does - he started out as a neurologist, and he says it's completely different from science.

The descriptions I've heard tie it to willpower and imagination-- more an inherent ability than a creatable or learnable one. Of course, that may be another thing that varies from world to world.

[Another brush stroke, and she gently manipulates his wrist, giving him access to the back of his hand for the next bit of painting.]

[Sam obediently lets her turn his hand however she needs to, watching the developing design with interest.]

Yeah, I've seen enough people on the network talking about magic that it sounds like the latter - some worlds, anyone can learn simple magic if they try, and on others, it's innate. Or it's a spectrum where everyone can do it, but there are people who're naturally better than others, just like, say, art.

[The next part isn't feathers-- it spills over onto his hand, a design in white and red that quickly begins to take on the shape of talons.]

Is that a hint?

Just relevant to the conversation, that's all.

[He definitely couldn't do anything like what Breq's painting on his skin.]

You do this for a living back home?

[Or even here, for that matter.]

For a living. [There's the slightest quirk to her mouth, a hint of some kind of humor, there-and-gone in her eyes before she looks back down at his hand and focuses painstakingly on another detail of the claws.]

No. I've worked odd jobs for a while. Before then I was military, like you.

[Although he catches a bit of the humor, he's dubious enough (and tactful enough) that he won't ask. People here have a lot of weird shit going on with their lives (or not-lives).]

It's hard to escape. At least, in my experience. Might be different for you, but- I thought I could just walk away from it. It's not really like that.

I agree.

[She's certain her situation is a bit different from him-- she's certainly not the same sort of vigilante dispenser of justice as seems to be popular among residents of the quarantine-- but the way the past follows you, she knows well enough about that.]

If you're lucky, you only have to fight to free your mind.

Tell me about it. And I was one of the lucky ones. Once I got enough of my life back together, I went back to school, started helping people who were even worse off. Puts a lot of things into perspective. Sometimes, the war wins in the end.

[He was never that bad off, thank god, but working with combat vets, Sam's had more than enough experience now. Gone to more than a few funerals for those who'd lost the fight.]

[It sounds... better than her. Breq stills for a half-second, her mind catching on wondering what might have happened if she hadn't know about the gun, hadn't formed a desperate plan. If she, the last remaining fragment of Justice of Toren, had run away from the Radch, instead of marching back toward it on a mission of revenge.

She casts the thought aside. She couldn't have turned away from that mission. And if she had, she would never have found Seivarden half-dead in the snow of Nilt.

She doesn't say anything more for a moment, just pulls the paint brush away, revealing the design of a wing spiraling down Sam's arm, ending in an outstretched talon curling along the back of his hand.]

There.

monthly mingle: CARNIVALE

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