riverviewlogs | monthly mingle: RIVER FESTIVAL

monthly mingle: RIVER FESTIVAL

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

river festival

In the days leading up to August 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: The River Festival. This holiday is in celebration of the river and the life that it gives to the city, as well as the heat of summer and forming bonds with friends, family, and romantic partners. The celebrations are marked by a community-wide cleanup of the docks and beaches along the river - particularly important considering the recent flooding that's left the banks of the river littered with debris - as well as beachfront cookouts and parties (both private and city sponsored) and beach sports tournaments happening on either open stretches of beach or in special clothing-optional beaches, all capped off with fireworks displays each weekend in August.

a celebration of the river and togetherness

Following the hedonism of Carnivale, it's time for something a little more low-key and relaxing. The River Festival happens every year in August, and is geared toward community building through cleaning up the beaches and docks along the river and then using all that freshly cleaned beach to gather on. During the month of August, there are various lightly-themed government-sponsored beach cookouts and parties geared toward family, romantic dates, or casual all-ages get-togethers for meeting new friends; there are also a few more racy parties at clothing-optional beaches around the city. Many private residents also take this time to gather together friends and family, and have cookouts on the beach with all the typical trappings of the beach barbecue. There are also various casual sports tournaments sponsored by community centers, gyms, and sports teams in the city, featuring prizes ranging from notoriety to sports equipment to big bucks. Every weekend, there are beautiful fireworks displays and free concerts. This year, the River Festival has been chosen for the unveiling of a new water park in the City, with free or heavily discounted tickets during August!

i. cleaning up

The holiday starts off on a note that is just a bit more sombre than the rest of the season, with the cleanup efforts following the recent flooding blending into the usual tradition of cleaning up beaches and docks along the river. The cleanup is a group effort, with every citizen who is physically able pitching in to comb the beaches, where they pick up fallen tree limbs, garbage, and anything else that's accumulated during the winter and spring, and then raking the beaches to make them clean and ready to use. The cleanup of the docks is similar, with residents sweeping and hosing them down where necessary. This year, there are a lot of repairs to be made to beachfront structures that might've been damaged by flooding and the traffic along the riverbanks from the heroes that participated in the rescue of cult hostages, so if anyone has some carpentry or building skills, those would definitely come in handy.

This is meant to be a community building effort, so many businesses in the area, more well-to-do private citizens, and the government have pitched in funding to provide lunches, cold drinks, coffee or tea, and snacks to anyone who's helping out with the cleanup efforts. All in all, the cleanup has a very friendly, welcoming vibe.

ii. beach activities

The main traditions of the River Festival involve cookouts and beach parties. Each weekend in August, the government as well as various corporations and businesses in the city, will be providing funds for large beach gatherings. On these days, there will be booths set up offering wares and freebies from various businesses around the city that have helped fund the party, large swaths of cleared beach where residents can don a swimsuit and catch some rays or swim in the river, massive barbecue setups to provide partygoers with all the standard barbecue fare, beach sports tournaments, dancing and musical performances, and fireworks displays (see prompts below).

The holiday isn't just about these big parties, though - many residents arrange their own barbecues, cookouts, beach camping trips, beach bonfires, and other riverside gatherings and outings. Many riverfront businesses offer discounts on services such as canoe or kayak rentals to go out paddling on the river, jetski or motorboat rentals for tubing, wakeboarding, or waterskiing, or mounts to take romantic rides in the surf. Additionally, there is an adults-only section of the beach where any of these activities can be done in the nude in a clothing-optional setting, including the big city-sponsored parties.

If your character is good at playing a particular sport that could, conceivably, be played on a beach, chances are that during the month of August, a tournament will be set up for them to participate in. The tournaments are pretty standard, generally sponsored by community centers, sports clubs and teams, gyms, and other organizations and businesses in the city, with various levels of specialization, and levels of skill or competitiveness. The prizes also vary, with everything from plain old bragging rights to sports equipment or passes to gyms and community centers, to large lump sums of cash money. Definitely worth it, for characters with a love for sport. Oh, and a lot of these tournaments are happening on the adults-only clothing-optional beaches, for those grown-up sports fans who like a bit of an extra challenge.

iii. fireworks and music

Each weekend throughout the month of August, there will be evening performances all along the beach. Not as extensive as the musical performances during Carnivale, the performances are geared more toward dancing than true concerts, with areas roped off on both on the regular and adults-only clothing-optional beaches for dancing and mingling (acts will switch off between the two areas so both areas get both performances).

Player-characters who are musical artists, DJs, or otherwise perform are free to set up shop around this party and panhandle or put on free performances for publicity.

After the sun goes down, boats will head out into the water carrying a variety of fireworks, and there will be a beautiful display of exploding color in the sky for residents to watch and enjoy. The fireworks are highly advanced, incorporating old-fashioned gunpowder as well as modern technology that result in really beautiful displays that can take the breath away!

iv. waterpark

This year, there's an extra little bit of fun being thrown into the River Festival - the grand opening of a new waterpark! It's quite the park, set near the river with a scenic view, and featuring all sorts of amazing rides, from waterslides that are catered to all ages and levels of thrill seeking, tube rides that are almost like a rollercoaster on water, a pool where customers can faux-surf, funnel rides, side-by-side racing slides, a lazy river, and almost anything else you can imagine. Besides the rides, there are also a wide variety of swimming pools for kids and adults - wave pools, lap pools, splash pools - and an equally wide variety of hot tubs featuring various minerals (and some aromatherapy) for relaxing, invigoration, and other effects.

Some of the hot tubs are in a clothing-optional adult area, where there are some normal pools and some clearly-labelled pools contain elements that increase arousal or desire, or simply affection to encourage some closer bonding!

v. roommates or wildcard

Feel free to use this prompt to meet new roommates, for the purpose of getting to know each other, or hit up one of the mod-posted prompts for each Communal Floor. Or if you have an idea for a prompt that isn't in this list, set during the River Festival, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: credit unknown; image ii: Albert Ramon Puig; image iii: Claudio Pilia; image iv: Alan Philips

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[Alex just laughed for a minute, because while hey, they had definitely been kidnapped by aliens before, at least they were all still them and not delusions or like whatever it was that Richard wanted her to think that he still believed they were. Taking a sip of her own wine, Alex just let out a contented sigh. Clearly, this was a good choice of an impulse buy. She was going to need to get more to bring home. Just savoring her glass and looking at the water, Alex was surprised when Skye said that she didn't go to the beach much.]

You didn't? Were you from a state that was landlocked or whatever? Or was it just too cold to go. That's what it's like for me back home, honestly. Just too cold unless you're really fond of hypothermia or wearing like a parka or something.

I don't know. [ a small shrug, her gaze shifting to watch the waves gently crash against the sand. ] I mean, I was all over the place as a kid. Never anywhere long enough for families to invite me on their beach vacations.

[ or any vacation, for that matter. she was a liability, an interruption to their daily routine. she couldn't even call a woman mom without being immediately shipped back to st agnes; a rosy-cosy road trip wasn't even close to being on the agenda. ]

And I don't know, I just never thought about it when I was on my own, and then when I was with SHIELD I pretty much slept through every day off I got.

[ to be fair, sleep was great. not so much a regret there, just a fact. ]

[For a minute, Alex just frowns sympathetically at Skye. All and all, Alex knows how lucky she is in that her parents had wanted her enough to adopt her, and she never needed to spend time in the system or anything like that. Oh, she doesn't remember a time when she wasn't Alex Reagan, but she is keenly aware of the fact that she could not have been, if her birth mother hadn't given her up.

But she doesn't mention it otherwise. There are some things that 'I'm sorry' just isn't good for, and this is one of them. So instead Alex just gives Skye a little squeeze of her arm.]

Well I think sleep would definitely be way more important than a beach day, honestly. [Says the woman who had barely slept in two years before she ended up here.] So I can't blame you for doing that. But if there's one thing that this place is actually pretty good at? It's sort of a little like being on a mini-vacation from real life. Can't do anything to save our worlds back home, can't fix anything or prevent anything. All we can do is just keep living as good of lives as we want here, really.

[A beat, and Alex just topped off both of their wine cups.]

Which means more wine and more beach days, right?

Yeah, [ a faint agreement, but one given all the same as skye takes a considering sip of her drink, adding: ] More wine is literally never a bad thing.

[ she's grateful for alex. there's an unspoken camaraderie that's been the base of their friendship, and through everything skye's been through here in the quarantine, she's had the steadiness of that friendship to lean on. she still regrets not being able to be there for alex more during the cult shenanigans, but... well, when you're on doctor-mandated bed rest, there's only so much you can do.

they linger for a moment in the quiet agreement of wine and better wisdom, but eventually, skye pipes back up again. ]

Speaking of inherently temporary situations... how much of a completely terrible idea is it to consider getting involved with someone here?

[ just dive right on into that question, why don't you. ]

The only thing wrong with too much wine is too much hangover the next morning. But we should be fine with this! [Because the two of them finishing the bottle wouldn't be enough for a hangover. Unless they went and got a couple more bottles. Alex's not planning on doing a couple more bottles. At least not yet anyway, maybe depending on how the conversation goes.

Skye's question catches her off guard for a moment, and she just takes a sip of her wine, mulling it over. Even when she'd arrived, she'd known that things were too complicated for her to even consider becoming involved with someone, which is why with John it was the sort of thing that was strictly friends with benefits. It helped that he was definitely in love with someone else too. But there were a lot of people who she knew who had done it and who had gone and decided that it was worth it, even with the way that things could be so very temporary here.A beat and then Alex asked:]

Anyone I know?

Probably.

[ which is a fair statement. alex has been in the quarantine longer than skye has, considerably so, and she's much more social and welcoming than skye is. it wouldn't surprise her if the girl knew everyone in some way or another. ]

Well. I don't know. Maybe? I don't know if you do or not, actually.

[ a small exhale, and skye twists the bottom of her cup firmly into the sand, making sure it won't tip over on its own. hands then free, she fishes out her phone from her back pocket, opening it up to the camera gallery and swiping through until she finds a particular picture; though she doesn't quite hold it out for alex to take, she doesn't make any attempt to hide the screen, either. it's just there, in her lap, to be looked at.

in said picture, there's a redheaded man lounging on her couch, looking pretty comfortable amidst an unreasonably tall stack of pizzas and what looks suspiciously like a big-budget explosions action flick on the small tv. if alex does know the face, she'll recognize it right away. ]

I mean, it's definitely a shitty idea because I'm definitely not fantastic with... anything remotely like that. But more specifically, because this place doesn't really seem like the kind of place you want to run those kind of risks. You know?

[Of course Alex looked at the picture. She was a reporter, after all, and thus she was nosy as hell and wouldn't be able to stop herself. Seeing the redhead, Alex just shook her head a bit. She knew a lot of people in the Zone, but she didn't know everyone, at least not yet. He wasn't even familiar to her from the network, which made her wonder if he was new as well. All and all, it just made Alex think that she was going to need to end up getting out there more. But that was for later, and not for now.

More than that, as Alex looked at the picture, she was struck by how intimate it looked, really. Like a picture one would take of their partner, like several pictures that Alex herself happened to have on her phone of her own partner. To Alex, it honestly already seemed like that decision had been made for Skye already, even if she didn't know it herself yet.]

I don't know him, but he's definitely cute!

[There, some reassurance as Alex studied her friend for a moment, and then she spoke softly.]

I think that for however long you're here? It seems like it would be a really terrible thing to deal with without love and intimacy if it happens. Yeah, you could go home tomorrow, but you could also be at home and just get hit by a bus crossing the street. None of really have any sort of guarantees about relationships, even if we want to have them.

[Understatement of the year there, Alex.]

As for maybe screwing it up somehow? Look at it this way, maybe you won't! You honestly don't know until you try.

Yeah. [ an exhale blown out through her nose, not quite a laugh but not quite not one either. ] He is, isn't he?

[ is that — dare we say — fondness lingering in the tone of one skye no last name? maybe it is. she lingers in that fond, quiet space for a moment or two while alex speaks, listening while her gaze traces lazy patterns over the lines of the photo; when her friend finishes on a positive note, skye offers a casual nod of her head before turning off the phone's display and tucking back into her pocket for safe keeping. ]

Back home is definitely not the place.

[ which was true. it wasn't the place for anything personal, for trying to carve out a life outside of the team and the job and the bus. there'd be no time, for one thing. but here... well, maybe the quarantine could be different. a vacation in more ways than one. ]

But here, I guess, maybe. I mean, all this is totally dependent on whether or not he thinks I'm a total freakshow. Or if I'm reading, like, every sign in the universe completely wrong.

[ it wouldn't be the first time!! ]

[Luckily (or perhaps unluckily) for Skye, Alex is rather aware of people who laugh in that fashion, so she is definitely taking the entire thing as a laugh. After all, the laugh seems like it would be really rather in place on Skye's face at the moment, and she's glad for it. More than that, however, Alex happens to be quite good at reading people. It's in her job description, and despite what people may think of her, Alex is actually quite good at doing that part of her job. So, when she watched Skye, Alex could definitely see the fondness in the woman's face, and it reminds her of herself. If nothing else, Alex would say that Skye had a crush, but one that seemed to be heading rapidly towards something that was more than that.

And going by the picture, Alex would suggest that she wasn't alone in that sort of situation, because she studied it as Skye did the same thing. It definitely didn't seem like her friend was reading the situation wrong. Not by a long shot! That said, Alex didn't judge her friend for not seeing it, Alex had been told for literally years what her feelings were towards someone (and what their feelings were towards her) by strangers on the internet constantly, but she'd completely discounted them. She wasn't surprised that Skye had done similiarly or did do similarly rather.]

Well, [Alex began with a smile and with bumping her friend in the shoulder for a minute.] I don't think you're reading it wrong at all. I think he definitely seems really into you! So, yeah, look at it as a vacation for as long as you want to, and then jump into it from there. He looks like a sweetheart, and you definitely deserve more than a little bit of vacation romance!

You can totally tell all of that from one picture, huh. [ deadpan, but there's a bit of laughter still lingering in her voice. not quite believing in everything alex is saying... but not totally disagreeing with her either. ] Maybe you're right.

[ she's not sure she'll ever be able to utter the phrase 'vacation romance' with a straight face, though. ]

What about you, though? If I'm supposed to make the most of my vacation time, you're not off the hook either. What's your thing?

I am a good judge of character quickly! Reporter remember? Besides... [Alex just adds with a grin.] Why the hell wouldn't he be into you? You're fantastic and gorgeous. He'd need to be stupid not to be.

[Frankly, anyone would be stupid not to want to be with Skye in her opinion! If things had been different, Alex herself might have been smitten. But Alex was always complicated at the best of times, and right now Skye's question just earns her a silly and fond smile.]

I'm definitely involved, Skye! But he's not from here. I knew him back home. Had feelings for him back home, actually and didn't admit it until right before he showed up. And it turned out that I had been wrong in thinking that he didn't have them for me.

Uh huh. [ but she's not complaining, either. what kind of girl turns down a free compliment from a trusted source? not the kind of girl skye claims to be, that's for damn sure. ] Well, I can tell you, he's not an idiot.

[ a bit slow on the uptake, a little bit frustrating, but certainly not stupid. ]

And, for the record, I'm zero percent surprised about the whole 'interested / not interested' love saga thing. He's probably been mooning over you in secret for months, right, just waiting for the right time to profess his unending adoration...

Good. You definitely need to date someone who isn't an idiot. [While Alex is of the opinion that all men are idiots sometimes, someone who is an idiot all the time would never be good enough for someone who is as smart of Skye. Not that she's going to say that.

Instead, Alex is just going to laugh softly and shake her head a bit.]

Sort of, but our lives are seriously complicated in ways I can't even talk about. So yeah, he was and definitely assumed that like... I would never want him back so we were both experiencing the same thing. But then I asked him to run away with me back home, and he finally got that I love him to bits. [And that she wanted to give him choices that he didn't have really.]

But he was from ahead of me when he got here, so it was a complicated month before I got those memories too. He was worried that something might have changed my mind or whatever.

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monthly mingle: RIVER FESTIVAL

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