riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: carnivale

Entry tags:

introductory mingle: carnivale

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Introductory Log and Carnivale Celebration
when: July 1st - July 9th
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 a large parade (and paid holiday!) capping it off on July 8th.

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 a massive party parade, 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.

At couple of the acts might be familiar faces to some of the residents.

Eichi Tenshouin has signed up himself and his friend Tsumugi Aoba into the music festival as a first-time appearing idol unit called "Higanbana." Dressed in all white with splashes of color (blue, largely, with only their headsets being a red spider lily), they carry a very commanding and angelic image together. They'll have a routine that emphasizes their great harmony with each other, taking turns doing solo lines and joining together to show off each of their talents. Singing and dancing, they interact heavily with the audience and will encourage a lot of involvement with speaking between songs and gestures, winks, and so on. Basically, they intend to make this Riverview's very first prominent "idol performance".

For his performance, Otabek Altin will start with rock remixes of a few popular pop songs. He wants to make sure that it starts off with recognizable pieces for some people, and he certainly thinks it is something that could get people excited even if they don't know it. Then, it shifts into a few original songs. They are upbeat, rock songs that he put together with the intention to make people dance and move, since he is a DJ. He'll end his set with a slower piece he put together that is also an original. Through the entire performance, he's focused and quiet, though he may occasionally try and excite the crowd with a few words.

Any other 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

The other main attraction of Carnivale week comes on July 8th, which is a paid holiday for everyone in the city. The Carnivale Parade will be starting out by City Hall and winding through downtown in a lazy pattern so everyone in the city has a chance to see it. There will be all sorts of floats, dancers, marching bands, with all sorts of clubs, businesses, and other organizations represented. The theme is theatrical, big and showy, bright and colorful, sparkly and shiny, with loud music and lots of glitz and glamour. 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 - some of them fit for kids and teens, others of a more 'adult' nature handed out a bit more discreetly to anyone who looks the part.

And make sure you wear your waterproof mascara - Carnivale 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 and kink exhibition

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).

For the weekend from July 7th-9th, there will be a kink exhibition in one of the large exhibition centers downtown, limited to characters 18+. The exhibition is a sexy adult informational convention featuring various kinks and fetishes. Whether you're into leather, latex, lace, or anything else, you'll be able to find the clothes, toys, guides, books, erotica, fiction, and a wide variety of other interesting stuff to explore. While the atmosphere is sex-positive and there are private and public (for the voyeurs and exhibitionists in the room) venues for having sex, it's definitely focused on exploration and information about different stuff to try.

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 Carnivale, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: Roger Patterson Jr.; image ii: Syd Mead; image iii: screencap from the movie Paprika; image iv: siamon89

navigation

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He knows that voice.

It cuts right through to his heart, because it's been years since he heard her voice and suddenly he's back on the Starblaster, back home, back with Lup calling him out for some bullshit or another.

There's a split second where he's shellshocked, and then Taako's face lights up as he runs, a rare enough feat for him when not being chased by something, but right now he's willing to exert the energy to get to Lup as soon as possible. And he doesn't stop, instead crashing into her with his arms thrown around her shoulders and honestly, he doesn't even care if she keeps her balance or if they go toppling over.

He's laughing and he's crying a little bit and it's Lup, that's all that matters.]

Fuck you.

[She didn't quite expect him to have that reaction, and Lup looks a little shellshocked as well when her twin barrels into her like that. She nearly topples over as he jumps her, but manages to stop them from falling into a big heap just in time. Thankfully they were the same height.

Then Taako's laughing and he's crying and fuck? What did that mean??]

Hi, loser. How are you holding up?

[Because wow that was the lamest comeback ever.]

Way the fuck better now!

[The thought of acting normal, the way he tried to do with Lucretia, doesn't even occur to him in this moment. Partly because he's so shocked and delighted that rational thought are a long way away, but he also knows that he could never lie to Lup. The only thing he ever kept from her was his fear about her becoming a lich, which was for her own safety.

Taako pulls back, bringing his hands up to cup her face, needing a second to just look at her.]

Hey, you.

[She leans into the touch as he cups her face, raising a brow slightly as he looks at her so intently.]

Hey you, too. What she shit is going on, Taako?

[There's a thousand thoughts running in her head now, and the main one is 'they failed' and everything had fucked up... and Taako had been alone after they tried their lich stuff.

She must have died, and he spent the rest of the cycle alone.]

I mean, you look fucking smashing but you're wrecking your makeup.

I'm gonna rock that hot mess look.

[He laughs again, breathless and shaky, but takes a quick second to wipe at his eyes and compose himself, knowing that he's going to have to explain everything to her. The last thing he wants is to worry her.]

What's the last thing you remember? I've got, uh, well there might be a lotta shit to catch you up on.

[This is the easiest way to resolve some things, though it's already clear that she's from before... before Lucretia betrayed them, because if Lup knew that she left, there'd be no need to explain.]

It's pretty much your signature style, so yeah.

[She reaches to push some hair from his face, tucking it behind a long ear. He was a mess, but they tended to pretty much glue themselves together after coming back (the few times they didn't die next to eachother).

It isn't until he asks what she remembers that Lup realizes she doesn't remember dying or getting back in the Starblaster.]

We were walking to the ritual. Me, you and Barry.

Bite me.

[There's no heat in it, not even the fake annoyance he can put into his voice when he's pretending to be upset by something she's saying. He just sounds fond and grateful and maybe a little bit sad.]

Thirty years, then, fuck. [At least it's closer to his own time than Lucretia. Less ground to cover.] The lich thing works, let's get that one outta the way. But it's... it's been rough, Lulu, we're out of the cycles.

[He tries to say more, but his voice catches and he has to close his eyes for a moment, not sure how to tell his fucking sister that she's dead.]

Edited 2017-07-05 01:05 (UTC)

What the fuck?

[Thirty years. Thirty years what? Out of the cycles? So did her and Barry's idea work, or...? Her voice is a little more unsteady as she watches her twin.]

Taako. You're not making sense.

[He said the lich thing worked, so what did that mean? Did that take them out of the cycles and they beat the Hunger? From the way he looks, she severely doubts that.

Then Taako's voice catches like that and Lup's stomach hurts with some kind of gnawing fear that she can't name.]

...Koko?

[There's no hiding this, or avoiding it, at some point he's going to have to tell Lup what happened, because she needs to know, even if half of it is still a mystery to Taako.

But he can't do it in the middle of a street, in the middle of a fucking party.]

I'm gonna zap us back to my place, yeah? Don't freak.

[Which is all the warning she gets before he casts teleport, taking them to his bedroom. It's about as sparkly as he is, right now. Reluctantly, he lets go of her, but only so he can fish a bottle of vodka out from under his bed (thanks, Cisco).

Then he sits on the end of the bed, patting the space next to him for Lup. He looks a little shaky, but he's trying to keep it together.]

We're gonna need this.

[The vodka. It's... rough.]

[They lunge and pop away from the street, arriving in what had to be Taako's bedroom. Nobody else quite used an entire room as their closet as her brother did. It also looked like someone killed a pixie in it.

It wasn't the Starblaster, though. In fact, it looked pretty damn nice. Like a home he had lived in for quite a while.

That just made it all weirder.]

Ugh I hate when you cast that, I always feel like I lost my stomach somewhere in the Ethereal Plane.

[It's not really the time to be complaining about stupid shit, but it just felt so normal to.

...but Taako is bringing out the big guns (vodka) and asking her to come sit with him. Lup gingerly walks over and sits next to him.]

Alright. Lay it on me.

[First order of business is a generous swig of that vodka, before he hands it to Lup. He wants to reach out for her again, take her hand or touch her knee but something makes him hesitate; it should be natural, to fall back into patterns they kept for centuries, but he has centuries of shaky memories without her.

Reconciling them is more difficult than he expected, now that she's in front of him.]

So, the lich thing works, you and Barry spend a couple decades scaring the shit outta poor Magnus whenever you die, and somewhere in there we go to a world where we learn to make powerful magic items, which is where you make that stupid thing. [He points to the umbra staff, resting against the doorframe; he hadn't bothered taking it with him to the party.] But you and your stupid boyfriend get it in your heads to break up the light, turn it into magical items to hide it from the Hunger. You thought we could starve it out.

[These are the basics, and easier to say, but:] Still with me?

[She grabs the vodka and takes a big swig of her own before looking at her brother again. He seemed awkward, but considering the shit he was saying, it wasn't strange that he did.

Two decades as liches. It didn't work as well as they had hoped, but hopefully it would at least have given them an edge over those close calls they had lately. If so, than it was worth it.

(He mentions powerful magic items and points at a goddamn umbrella in the corner and yeeeeah, she would probably make something awesome as that.)

...but then Taako tells her about the idea to break up the Light and hide it in artifacts. Starving it out. It sounded genius, really... but the way her brother phrased it made it sound like it failed.]

I'm with you.

We knew the items would be like the light, how it wants to be used, you know? And we knew they'd be powerful but we didn't...

[It went so much worse than they thought it would, and they were powerless to stop it. Taako's item caused some destruction, but nothing on the scale of what the gauntlet did, and that guilt ate Lup from the inside out.]

You couldn't do it, you couldn't let people keep dying cause of something you made, so you... left.

[To stop it, he knows that, and he doesn't know if she meant to stay gone for as long as she did, if the note was just an empty reassurance, or if things went horribly wrong. He doesn't know when she ended up in the dwarven vault.

He has to take a breath, trying to keep himself steady.]

It's been over a decade, Lup. We found your skeleton a year ago. I don't... I don't know why you weren't in your lich form, something must've happened, but I heard you, I heard your voice in my head. We just don't know where the fuck you are, none of us can find you.

[Only Barry has been looking, but he doesn't know how to talk about Lucretia's betrayal, not yet.]

Edited 2017-07-05 01:52 (UTC)

[She can't breathe. Everything just seems to have seized up in her chest and Lup isn't sure she can keep it together. She doesn't cry but here she is, tears stubbornly held back as Taako tells her how a thing she made killed people. She doesn't even know the amount of it, but just hearing it is wrecking.

Of course she had to leave and stop it.

...and then the last part hits and it's fucking terrifying. Yeah, she had died a lot before. Yeah, she knew she would stay in a lich form if she died after this ritual - but just hearing that Taako found her skeleton is just messed up.

That it has been a decade is messed up.

That they can't find her is what makes her tears finally go, because fuck.]

I left you alone. Taako, I'm... I'm so sorry.

Sorry, shit, fuck.

[There's nothing worse in the world than making Lup cry; it's a rarity but when it happens it feels awful, and Taako sort of panics for a moment before taking the bottle from her, setting it down, and pulling her into a hug.]

It's okay, yeah? I get it, you wouldn't be you if you'd just let that shit keep happening, and whatever you did worked. The deaths stopped. [He doesn't know if that offers any sort of comfort, but obviously at some point she thought leaving was worth the risk to stop the gauntlet killing more people.

Sometimes he wonders why she didn't just tell him; he would've gone to the ends of the world with her.] I'm not-- I missed you, more than anything. But I'm not mad.

[He could never be mad.]

[She buries her face against his chest, grasping what she could to hold on to her brother. Her twin, her heart. Lup isn't sure what's worse right now, it all just wound together in a big steaming shit soup.

Taako says she managed to stop people from dying, at least - and he's so, so right. She wouldn't be her if she let something like that happen. Just like she wouldn't be herself if she let them destroy a planet.

But she's still dead and lost somehow, and Taako had been alone.]

This place is messed up. I just saw you less than a day ago, and now we're here and so much has changed.

[It's a little muffled because she's still leaning against him.]

If I'm still there... you said you heard me? I'll find you again.

[Grief is a strange thing. In a way, he lost her over a decade ago, but the time between then and now was empty of her, in a way that meant he couldn't mourn her, couldn't even remember that there was something to mourn, even if there was an emptiness in his heart that makes so much more sense, with remembering.

But Lup isn't grieving for herself, he doesn't think, she's grieving on behalf of him.

So there's no reassurances he can really give, but he wraps her up tight and smooths down her hair and tries to fight back tears.]

I know, bubbale, I know you will. I never doubted for a fucking second that you were coming back to me.

[It's a lie, in a way, but he never stopped hoping.]

[Lup isn't sure if she knew how to grieve for herself. It's strange to even think about. She would lose things, yes, but she hated the through of bringing others pain even more.

...so she can grieve for her brother's sake, someone she had sworn to protect and always be there for, leaving him alone in the fucking mess that were their world.

So she had to come back. You always had to return to your heart.]

You know it. Someone has to make sure you don't do stupid shit.

Gods, I've done so much stupid shit.

[Just like the start of this, his laugh is shaky with threatening tears, but it's still genuine, because he has. There's been a lot that's happened without her, including his show and the aftermath and the whole hunt for the relics. He's been different, without her, and he knows it but isn't sure how to bring that up.

I forgot you feels too cruel.]

I know this is kinda like, a fucking taboo question for us, but are you okay?

Of course you have.

[She laughs - a quiet and slightly tear-filled one, but still a laugh.

When he asks if she's okay, Lup finally lets go and grabs the vodka from him while holding up a finger in a 'wait' gesture. Then she just chugs a third of the damn at once.

Fuck no she's not okay, but she's going to deal with it. She's not as good as Taako at hiding away her emotions in some little part of her and toss away the key, but she could push herself.

Power through.]

You're a shithead and I hate you.

[It's so very, very fond.]

[This is why he grabbed the vodka, it's not exactly the best way to cope with the current emotional upheaval, but he knows they'll sort things out eventually, that it'll stop hurting so much. Right now, though, he's dumped a lot of shitty information on Lup and can't blame her for needing something.]

I love you too.

[Those aren't words Taako says a lot, and Lup is one of the few people who gets to hear them. He could've just repeated the I hate you, she would've known what he meant.

But the words themselves feel important, right now.]

[Those words makes her grab him for a hug again - briefer this time but just as emotional. She wants to say it back a million times, but it's just not what they do. Plus she's done crying for the next century.

...then Lup pulls back again with a concerned frown.

Taako was her heart, her second half - but they had other family these days.]

How... how is everyone else? Are they here?

Lux is here.

[There should be a weight to that announcement but he manages to make it sound like a good thing, instead of the complicated mess that it is.]

She's from way back, when we got Fisher? I've told her some shit, it's been kinda weird. [understatement of the century] The rest of our dipshits are back in Fearun, they're all okay.

[debatable]

That far back?

[It was really weird to think about. She was a different person back then, before the year where they all died and she was the only one left. Softer.

More innocent.]

Faerun? That's the name of the place you guys landed on?

[And, of course, the question she dreaded:]

...how's Barry?

[She's gone or missing and fuck, they were supposed to keep eachother in check.]

She's kind of a baby, yeah.

[Which comes from two places, one of them being the fact that Lup and Taako are a hell of a lot older than the rest of the IPRE, and the other that there's a big difference between 30 and 80, or even 30 and 110 years. There's a lot of things that Lucretia hasn't been through, yet, including what she does to them.

At the question about Fearun, he just nods a confirmation, because he's kind of expecting what's coming next and wants to focus on that.]

Kinda... lichy. [And he holds up a hand, as if anticipating Lup's concern.] He's got a way to get new bodies. I dunno how exactly, we've sorta been separated, but he's been kinda on and off. With the lich thing...

rude

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