introductory mingle: RIVER FESTIVAL

[riverviewmod]

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Introductory Log and River Festival
when: The month of August; the bulk of celebration will be in week 1, but there is a party and fireworks display on August 14th.
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 acid rain - 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 on the evenings of August 7th and 14th.

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 first week 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. Finally, there are two fireworks displays, one on August 7th and one on August 14th, with free food, and various live performers beforehand.

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 late July's strange fog and acid rain 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 the acid rain, 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. cookouts and parties

The main traditions of the River Festival involve cookouts and beach parties. On August 7th and August 14th, 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.

iii. sportsball tournaments

Is your character 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.

iv. performances and fireworks

On August 7th and August 14th at the end of the large city-sponsored beach parties, there will be evening performances all along the beach. Not as extensive as the musical performances during Carnivale, there are two large-name performers per night, with various lesser-known groups performing at random off and on throughout the day and night. Areas of the beach are cleared for residents to watch and dance to the music, both on the regular and adults-only clothing-optional beaches (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!

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

navigation

Comments

[franciscoramon]

Now that is just all kinds of shady. They seriously faked an execution? Fucking figures...

[ Cisco can tell this is something personal for Ed - not just a story he heard. It makes sense, once he explains that he'd been expected to continue that fucked up research, himself. Cisco's own experience of military corruption is not quite so personal, but he still has strong feelings about it. ]

Doesn't sound very different, nope. And people talk about how the military will handle all this dangerous stuff all on their own, but a lot of the time the people in charge of those groups are just out for their own good, and don't care how many laws they have to break or how many people they hurt in the process.

[ He thinks about Bette Sans Souci, whose death still stings, about Eiling kidnapping and torturing Stein, about him developing weapons specifically to stop Barry, who was the one actually on the side of good. ]

That's one of the things I like about this place. I mean, sure, there's the Perimeter Guard, but it's not the same, you know? They don't operate that way.

[alchemyfreak]

I was told they decided to forego the embarrassment of a trial, too much evidence piled up against him. Especially with witnesses... I guess I didn't think to question it, I was only twelve at the time.

[Ed could tell Cisco horror stories, but everyone he's told so far reacts pretty intensely so he's learned to keep the story of Nina to something more generic. It was always weird to realize what bothered people here and what didn't, and nothing was universal.]

Where I'm from the military has a reputation. We're called dogs of the state, civilians don't like us much. They say we're on a leash and have to obey orders no matter what the outcome.

[It hadn't been like that for Ed, he'd gotten around things and he knew it. Not that it mattered now, he was a fugitive of the state when he went home.]

The Perimeter Guard is made up of new arrivals and civilians, I'm not sure how much it could get away with considering there probably isn't too much loyalty in the ranks.

[There was too much fresh meat as far as he was concerned, that'd make it hard to pull off a seedy operation no one else new about. Still, he's skeptical considering how much went on behind the scenes in his own world.]

I hope you're right though... That there isn't anything going on that we don't know about.

[franciscoramon]

[ Cisco's reactions to things operate on a different logic than one might expect typically. For relatively minor stuff, he tends to be loud, exaggerated, flamboyant even. But when something is truly shocking, he mostly gets still, and quiet, and understated. And that's what happens, now. He's had this happen before - run into people who casually mention something that makes it clear how rough their life has been, or else talked to people from dystopian hellscapes, from planets that were destroyed, from worlds in the middle of the actual apocalypse. It's not something he's really getting used to. ]

You were in the military when you were twelve?

[ Normally, Cisco's not one to comment on age in this particular way - which is a legacy of being tired of people asking him why he was so much younger than his fellow students or coworkers. But for there to be a preteen in military service, well, that's so far from normal that he has to ask. Maybe that's normal in Ed's world, which would be fucked up. Or maybe he'd been an exception, which... is still super fucked up. ]

I know a few people in the Guard. People I trust.

[ Impossible to be 100% certain, of course, particularly when it came to the folks who were complete strangers to Cisco. But Wally and Billy, at the very least, wouldn't be party to anything awful or even a little bit fishy. Cisco doesn't trust widely, or easily, but he trusts those two. ]

I haven't seen any signs that there is. And believe me, when I first showed up? I looked.

[alchemyfreak]

[Ed is also one to go quiet when news is extreme, so he recognizes it in Cisco immediately. He'd triggered something there, and he wasn't sure what until the other spoke.]

Yeah...

[A disarming grin accompanied that response, waving a hand dismissively. He could see that it bothered Cisco, but he wasn't sure of the in depth reasoning.]

Youngest ever to pass the State Alchemy exam, I'm ... kind of famous back home.

[It sounds less somber that way, right? Like it was no big deal and clearly not a normal habit of the military to enlist minors. He's just trying to take the edge off, no idea if it will work though.]

I've been looking since I got here... but that was in June, not that long ago. Not long enough to really uncover anything. I'm part of the Guard myself, I have too many skills to really limit to one particular unit so I've been able to snoop around a few places.

[franciscoramon]

Damn...

[ Even if it's not a habitual recruitment policy, and even if it sounds like maybe what he was doing was primarily state-funded research, Ed is essentially saying he's famous for being a child soldier, which is pretty damn messed up, according to Cisco's way of seeing the world. There's just no way that wasn't ten kinds of messed up, especially considering the rather dismal view Ed seems to have of the military now, and all the shady shit they were apparently doing involving DNA experiments.

But he really doesn't even know how to talk about any of that without nosing into shit that isn't his business, or possibly sounding judgmental, so Cisco somewhat awkwardly diverts the subject: ]

That's the weird thing about this place, huh? It- equalizes things. You get to leave your reputation behind, start fresh.

[ That had been a good thing, for Cisco, at least. He hadn't been famous, back in Central City, but in certain ways he had stood out, been different. Here, he doesn't. Everyone is from worlds too diverse and too different for any one set of biases or preconceptions to reign over everyone. Which is new, and strange, and kind of great. He's already decided this place is where he wants to stay, permanently. ]

How long would you say is long enough? Or are you just going to keep looking?

[alchemyfreak]

[Civilians tended to have a dismal view of the military to start, calling them dogs of the military and all that - so naturally he'd gotten a lot of shit for joining from family. He hadn't done it out of any interest in being part of the military, but Cisco didn't question his motives to get involved either. He just moved onto the next subject, which Ed was relieved for.]

It really does.

[He's not sure if that's a good thing or not, a lot of the time. He'd made some friends out of some very shady people in the past because Purg was the same way, there was no way to know about a person until they revealed themselves. Nevermind that it took a demonstration for anyone to believe anything he could do, which was unique to this place as well.]

Probably just keep looking. The first thing I saw in the military was corruption, and I didn't realize how deep it went for four years. I'm not making that mistake here. Even if there's nothing malicious going on, things are kind of weird here and I intend to keep checking them out.

[franciscoramon]

[ Cisco nods, not saying anything for a few moments. He isn't much surprised by Ed's answer. If anyone knows how deeply it can impact you, finding out that you've been manipulated, that secrets have been kept from you, it's Cisco. For him, that betrayal had been personal, rather than systemic. His own form of paranoia comes in interpersonal relationships, rather than the broader conspiracy theory type stuff.

But if it was the military itself that had pulled all that shit... it makes sense, that Ed is just going to keep looking, even if this place isn't shady after all. Cisco doesn't know him well enough to judge whether that's healthy or not. It's not really his business. All he can really do is give a short shrug and say: ]

Fair enough. You find anything sinister under the weirdness, and you need someone to back you up, lemme know.

[alchemyfreak]

[He seems surprised by that response but nods with a small smirk.]

Will do, just let me know how to find you.