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

Hope you like chocolate shakes. Chocolate literally makes everything better.

[Sometimes Alex could be a cliche, and she didn't mind it that much. At least she wasn't feeding him coffee. The idea of Simon on coffee is a scary thing.]

I think that might be an exaggeration.

[ He can name a lot of things that it wouldn’t make better food and otherwise. He is still idly fidgeting his hands under the table. ]

Still. It helps.

[Alex just raises a brow at him, and she drops her chin into her hand and is studying him intently.]

You're not planning on summoning anything here, right? Because I really do like the pizza here and would prefer not to be banned from it, okay? Richard would try and pick up the pizza and we both know what he's like.

Helps?

[ Simon raises a brow. ] Helps what exactly?

[ His hands still beneath the table, frowning slightly. ]

I'm not the one that went around summoning things, Alex.

Helps almost anything that's on your mind, honestly.

[Alex just shrugs a bit, because when she's having a hard time she's reaching for the chocolate. It's probably happened one of the times he was stalking her. She lets out a little sigh though, and raises a brow.]

Yes, Simon, I know you wouldn't. I'm making a joke about it. You're still doing something, though.

How?

[ Yes, he wants to know the mechanics of comfort food apparently but he’s not really had one before. ]

What do you think I’m doing?

[For a moment, Alex just blinked, because no one had ever asked her that before. And honestly, because she'd never really thought about it before. Honestly, Alex had a lot of privilege, and she'd always been well-loved both by her parents and by the friends and peers around her. Comfort food was something that she'd never really thought about, and instead had just devoured pastries and coffee and mac and cheese when she was having a hard time. But Simon probably didn't have that. If he did have it at some point, she doubted that he would have had it after he was eleven.

Without thinking about it, Alex just reached over and gave his arm a little touch. It would have been a squeeze, but she didn't want to freak him out, and Alex tended to be a toucher when she was worried about someone, and she was definitely worried about him.]

I don't know, it's just a sort of food that makes me happy.

[Dropping her chin into her hand, she looked to him again.]

Does anything make you happy, Simon?

[ Really, even before the asylum, his parents weren't the type to care very much for his comfort. He was a tool more than a person, more than their child. He's just a means to an end and even now to himself that's all he is, a means to an end of preventing the apocalypse -- not a person or individual.

He tenses slightly when she touches him. It's not that she hurt him but touch isn't a commonality and in his experience has been a largely negative thing. He doesn't pull away instantly but he doesn't let it linger too long before he pulls his arm back away from her hand, still appearing a bit tenser than before. ]

Alex, don't ask questions you know the answer to and wish you were going to get a different one.

Edited 2018-08-23 19:10 (UTC)

[Honestly, Alex didn't really know how not to do the comfort thing. Even when she knew that she shouldn't have done it with Richard, Alex had found herself doing it to him while they worked together, even before someone could actually even call them friends. More than that, Alex cared for Simon, so it was damned near impossible for her not do it unless she made the decision to actually think about it.

Which was something she was going to have to do, she decided, even as she frowned at Simon. When he said things like that, it hurt honestly, and it made her angry. Even more angry than she already was at Thomas Warren, and Maddie Franks and his parents and everyone else who tried to make more versions of Simon and just hand them over to the demons and the shadows and everything else that they did.

So in the end, Alex just shrugged:]

I'm always going to ask questions, Simon. You should know that about me. Besides, it's not wishful thinking, it's me being hopeful. And I'm never not going to be hopeful when it comes to you having a better life here. I'm not going to apologize for it.

[Yes, the last bit is entirely spoken with the old Alex Reagan determination, and she wasn't going to deny it.]

[ Simon looks down at her words, he doesn't really know what to do with them at the end of the day. He know she's infinitely hopeful and that's what is so important about her but when it's directed at him it's like looking directly into the sun and how it would hurt one's eyes. Her hope was going to make him go blind or something. ]

I didn't tell you not to ask questions.

[Alex just watched him for a moment before she chided gently:]

Okay but, you literally just told me not to ask questions I know the answer to and wish for a different one. I'm going to ask those questions because I'm going to continue to hope that you find something that is a different answer, Simon. Especially while we're here with no demons and no monks and no Thomas Warren having agents around every corner.

[A pause and a gentle smile:]

You deserve to have this chance for however long you're here, Simon. I just wish you'd take it.

monthly mingle: CARNIVALE

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