riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: SAMPREMI

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introductory mingle: SAMPREMI

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Introductory Log and Sampremi Celebration
when: March 8th - March 15th
where: In several different locations in the downtown area of the Inhabited City.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

sampremi celebration

In the days leading up to March 8th, new residents may notice advertising around the city, everywhere from digital screens to paper flyers pasted on blank walls, featuring the name of the spring holiday in celebration of new beginnings, new love, and lust: Sampremi. The advertising mentions that there will be street festivals set up at various locations throughout the week and lists where the market will be set up on each day.

street market

The main draw of the holiday is a roaming street market that features special treats and street food that can only be found during Sampremi, a bustling bargain market with any kind of goods you can think of, and fair games that allow a person to win a prize for that special someone.

i. street food

One of the major draws of the festival is the special street food that can only be obtained this time of year. Almost everything you can buy at the Sampremi Festival is meant to be shared - whether it's one piece of meat on two sticks or desserts baked with a narrow part in the middle for convenient tearing, everything is built in twos. The stalls sell everything from cups of soup, sandwiches, roasted or fried meat, deep-fried vegetables and cakes, dumplings, donuts, bagels, turnovers, and anything else you can think of.

Many of the savory dishes are based on the meat of a particular fowl native to the moon Riverview is situated on that has a taste and texture halfway between chicken and duck, cooked to be spicy (ranging from very mild to throat-burning). Many of the desserts are based around a fruit native to the moon that is spherical, red-orange, and has a light sweet taste that is similar to a combination of mango, pineapple, and strawberry. Both ingredients are considered to be aphrodisiacs. Of course, the foods aren't actually aphrodisiacs and any effect is purely placebo.

ii. fair games

The festival features an entire row of fair games ranging from very high-tech games featuring virtual reality and neon holograms to extremely old-fashioned games with darts and balloons or balls and glasses. The games all have prizes in various shapes and sizes, with the standard stuffed animals, but also with goods and special items donated by any business in the city; ranging from tiny prizes to huge and expensive ones.

Due to the nature of the holiday, many of the stalls are set up to cater to winning a prize for your partner, and due to the nature of the Quarantine, a lot of them involve aiming or other aspects of pretending to fight.

iii. shopping

Originally, the part of the street festival that involved an actual market, with stalls and booths set up with goods, was aimed primarily at romantic trinkets like flowers or jewelry, gifts intended to be purchased for a loved one. As time has gone by, however, this aspect of the market has increased, with many businesses participating, though the emphasis is still on small businesses and anything relating to local culture rather than booths for any of the larger more corporate businesses.

There is still plenty of jewelry to be found, for sure, mostly handmade and artisan, but the scope of the Market has widened immeasurably. The Sampremi Market is an excellent place to find specialty foods, clothing, jewelry, art, or other goods that were originally native to cultures on other planets in this reality, or other realities altogether. Many residents in the city use the market to share their unique cultural goods and traditional dress with others.

iv. adult

In a side alley of the Sampremi Market on any day, one can find an area roped off with a red silken cord, attended by members of the Perimeter Guard in casual dress who will ID anyone entering to make sure they are 18+. Once characters are permitted entry, they will find all of the adult offerings that the market has to offer.

Since Sampremi is, historically, a celebration of lust and physical love, the adult offerings are all set up to cater to two or more people of any sex or gender configuration. One can find an adult or sexualized version of almost anything that's featured in the main market, from fair games to adult goods to street food laced with actual aphrodisiacs (there are always warnings for food spiked in this way to avoid accidental consumption).

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 at the Sampremi Festival, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit (left to right): Theo Prins, andreasrocha @ tumblr, hrormir @ deviantart, nkabuto @ deviantart

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thanks for the tip.

[She'd argue that she doesn't really need it, but she'd been more focused on the pins when she'd thrown and can't remember what her arm had been doing. Maybe she'd stopped too soon, she doesn't know. She does know that she's not one to hesitate once she's started acting on something, so following through on this shouldn't be hard.

Taking careful aim with her second shot, she follows through with his advice. Her upper arm strength is pretty decent for someone her age - might have been better if good nutrition could have been a constant. That's something she can get here, at least.

The ball hits better this time, and a good third of the pins go tumbling. It's not all of them, but she never expected to get all of them. It's rare to be great at something on the first couple tries.]

Maybe a smaller bear would be better after all.

[ The next try, the girl hits the ball more directly and a few pins topple off the pyramid. These games are rigged so for a small-sized girl to be able to do any damage to the design at all is probably impressive in its own rite. He won't go as far to say it'd be impossible for her to win the big prize, but it certainly isn't meant to be easy.

He's still rolling the last ball of his turn around in his hands as he watches her prepare for her last turn. It would be so easy for him to do it for her; finish his own turn with the game by knocking over the pyramid again in one try and just handing her the bear, but something tells him that maybe this girl is the type who would rather do it herself. ]

Maybe...but if you knock it over on your next turn, the man will be nice enough to combine my win with yours, since I was just playing for the sake of playing anyway. Plus...

[ He holds up the last ball from his turn and shrugs. ]

You can have this one, too, if you want.

You're being a little too optimistic if you think I can really knock over the rest of those.

[Rigged game, remember? She's no master at this, and the more nervous she gets the more likely she is to mess up and miss the pins completely. Or at least not him them hard enough to make much of a dent.

She doesn't want to embarrass herself in front of this man. In order to have an easier time focusing she'll have to pretend he isn't there, a task that's much easier to imagine than do.

She takes aim and throws again. The ball hits square on - but a little too square on. What's left of the pins is shifted back but only one lazily tips and falls off the edge. Clementine huffs lightly in frustration.]

Well, if you're going to go into it with that attitude, you're probably right.

[ It isn't said in a lecturing tone; rather, something slightly amused. His mother used to say things like that to he and his sisters all the time and, dammit, she'd usually been right. Self-fulfilling prophecies and all. But, in the girl's defense, the game is rigged and he doubts she's got the strength behind her throws that he does, regardless of her size. He doesn't smell the wolf on her. She's probably a human being and they tend to be a little weaker than he is, by nature.

She hits the pins a lot more dead on this time, but the way that they're weighted down on the bottom makes them simply shift, rather than actually fall. One topples, but the others stand stubbornly still upright. She sounds frustrated. ]

You wanted the big bear, right?

[ He can win it for her if she really wants it, or if she'd prefer, he's still willing to give her the last ball in his turn so that she can win the small one for herself. ]

Or if you want to go one more time...

[ He offers his ball up again, just in case she's forgotten that he doesn't mind her taking his last turn. ]

[Clementine looks over at the ball, then back to the pins. Someone might consider it cheating to use an extra turn, but this place was cheating its customers first. She doesn't do these on a regular basis and doesn't have any pride built up into how great her throwing arm is. She just tried it out because she wanted a bear.]

...Sure.

[She reaches for the ball, taking it from his hand and studying the pins again. Defeatist or not, the chance of her knocking down all the pins is still small. There's no getting around that. She can try her best but she isn't expecting a miracle.

Throwing again, she aims a little higher. She wants to hit the middle of a center pin - high, but not too high. Just high enough to tip it over and hopefully anything else around it. The hit is successful, for the most part. Most of the pins fall from the stand, but two stubbornly remain on one side. As if in defiance, they haven't moved a bit from their original position.

Well. She'd tried.]

[ He's got to admire her willingness to keep trying, even if the odds are stacked against her. Either way, he's knocked over his pins at least once, so she can have the bear if she wants one, it just won't be a big bear, so he doesn't have a problem giving away his last turn in favor of letting her try to win it for herself one more time. Maybe it's cheating, but maybe since he only took two turns, she's allowed to have four. Six turns are still happening between the two of them, so it's not like the guy running the game is getting screwed out of his pay, after all, right? ]

I mean, that's a pretty good try, if you ask me.

[ Derek gives her a small smile. She might not have won it, but she did better than probably most girls her size would've done. That, plus her determination to give it another try instead of just letting him do it just because she could see already that he could is pretty cool, if you ask him. Plus, it shows she's a little bit stubborn; that reminds him of his baby sister, who's only probably a few years older than this girl.

So when the guy running the game plucks a little green stuffed bear off the rack, Derek offers it up to her. ]

I'm stronger than I look; I kinda cheated. You came pretty close even before you got my last turn. You can have it, if you want. I'm just going to give it away, anyway. Like I said, I was just playing for old time's sake.

[Clementine hesitates before reaching to take the bear from Derek's hands. Far be it from her to turn down the very thing she'd been playing for, whether it's smaller or not.]

...Just so long as we're clear that I don't owe you anything for this.

[There's nothing worse than some jerkwad who seems giving at first and then starts asking for favors in return later. She can't take anything for granted, especially from strange men. Some of them have genuine fatherly tendencies. Some of them are just creeps. And it's not always easy to distinguish the two at first.

She wants to think the best of people, but her world hasn't always allowed it.]

[ Derek holds his hands up defensively once she takes the bear and he shakes his head. ]

I don't know what you think I could possibly want from a girl your age, but...we're good. You don't owe me anything.

[ Quite frankly, he doesn't want to know what she thinks he could want from her in exchange for something that simple, because if that's her first response, she's probably seen some shit, if he had to guess. ]

I'm Derek. I probably should've introduced myself sooner, but...well. [ He shrugs. He's not that good at people, honestly, so it is what it is. ]

These games are all rigged, but once you find out how to get around it, that's how you win stuff. Like that one? The bottles on the bottom row are weighted and the softballs they give you are filled with cork, so they're lighter weight than a normal softball, but not by so much that most people would notice. So you aim low, throw hard. If you hit just the right spot, they'll fall. It takes practice. Took my sisters and I years to figure it out and find the sweet spot to knock them down.

Clementine.

[She doesn't ask for names much, but she'll give hers if asked. Knowing someone's name just means they'll have that much more of an impact on her when they die. Hopefully that won't be as much of an issue here. It'll be a nice respite, even though it's come far too late.

She tucks the bear under one arm.]

Meanwhile they get your money and you might get a few cheap prizes out of it. Thanks for the bear, but next time I'll probably just get one in a store.

[It might cost her less than the practice it would take to get good at these games. Maybe later, if she's feeling more comfortable here and stuff like this is still around, she'll give actual practice with these another go.]

Nice to meet you, Clementine.

[ He's never heard that name on a real person before. On characters in movies or songs or whatever, but never in person. She's just all kinds of unique, this kid, isn't she? ]

Or the experience, because I think that's really what it's about. Playing to say you tried, or whatever. But that's fair enough.

[ With a small wave of his hand to acknowledge the gratitude, Derek shakes his head. ]

No problem. I'll leave you to it. I think I'm going to play a couple more of these things. You can hang around if you want but I promise not to be offended if you don't want to. I know there's a lot to see and do here.

[ It's his way of letting her know, because she seems to be suspicious of people in general — or maybe just men, which is entirely possible and...incredibly sad to think about, given the implication — that he's not going to follow her if she wants to walk off, but that she's also welcome to stay if she wants to watch him play any more of the games and reap the benefits because he still doesn't intend to keep any of the prizes. It's still about reliving the memories of the times he spent with his sisters. ]

[This would be a great time for her to walk off, because there is a lot more to see and do here. She considers it. But then, watching someone else play these games who's actually good at it could be entertaining too. And if she isn't enjoying enjoying herself she can always leave.

There's a lot of freedom offered her here.]

Eh. I can stay a little while.

[This world isn't like the one she left. People can still be decent here and she has less reason to worry about them dying on her within the month. She leans against a nearby stall, readjusting the bear under her arm so she can stick her hands in her pockets.]

[ Admittedly, Derek is a little bit surprised that she's interested in sticking around. He'd gotten the impression that perhaps he was being a little pushier than he had intended to be and had monopolized her time and attention enough uninvited, but he gives her a small smile and nods, moving away from the current game to look for another.

A lot of these are high tech and he's never seen them before. Derek isn't a tech kind of guy; having a smartphone is obnoxious enough as it is. So he moves right past those, looking instead for the more old-fashioned games like the ones he used to play with Laura and Cora when he'd been a kid.

Derek doesn't need much by way of luxury. They pay him enough at Perimeter Guard to live comfortably, but Derek's never bothered to live comfortably. Not since the fire, anyway. He doesn't buy himself things he doesn't absolutely need, and here, that just means he needs to make sure he can afford food. Besides, he's still got most of the first month's stipend left because, again, he only bothered with the things he'd needed: food. So, he might as well offer if she wants to play but she's worried about her spending habits. A couple of games won't hurt, if she wants to play, too.

He stops in front of one of the one with the water guns that one is supposed to shoot into a hole to race other people playing and huffs his amusement more to himself than to her. ]

My baby sister used to beat me in this game every time we played. I could only win if she wasn't with me.

[ He looks over at Clementine then and lifts his eyebrows in question. ]

You wanna play this one with me or just watch? [ An offer after which he quickly tacks on, just to clarify, ] My treat and I promise you still don't owe me anything.

[When he makes the offer Clementine gives the game a skeptical look. She'd forgotten that there would be competitive games in the mix here. If it had been up to her she would have avoided those in favor of the ones that only took one player, but if this guy's going on a nostalgia trip she can't really blame him.

She comes closer, situating herself behind one of the other guns.]

So what, you just squirt the target?

[It looks like doing that makes something else move, but if that's all it takes then couldn't people just sit with the stream of water on the target the whole time? Where was the difficulty factor? Squeezing the trigger first?]

I've never done this one before.

[Maybe it'll actually be fun. It's been a while since she's truly been able to enjoy herself.]

[ He's expecting to receive that same look he got when she took the bear, so when it comes, he isn't surprised and he doesn't push. She can just watch if she's wary about the idea of him being full of it when he says they're square. But he smiles a little when she takes a seat behind one of the guns and Derek settles onto the stool beside hers after paying the woman running the game for two people to play. ]

Pretty much, yeah. Usually they'll do, like, a countdown and once it starts, they'll ring a bell and turn on the guns. Then you just squirt the target. If you can get in the little hole at the bullseye, it'll make the little horse with your number on the board move forward. The idea is to get your horse to the end before anyone else who's playing, so the better your aim, the faster your horse.

[ Other people are slowly filling in the stools around them and readying their own guns. Derek looks over at Clementine again. ]

I like this one. Somebody always wins. It isn't always you, but it's always someone. It feels like less of a waste of money, I guess, knowing that this one is actually about skill. The only trick I've figured out is not to already have your trigger squeezed before they turn the guns on, because it'll make your gun sputter a second or two before it actually shoots. Or at least, that's always what happened when I used to do it.

[ The woman running the game moves to the far side of the booth so that she's out of the way and she starts to work the small crowd gathered behind their pistols to make sure they're ready and excited before she starts the countdown of 3...2...1...

The bell rings loudly in his ears reminding him of fire alarms back when he'd been in school what seems like a lifetime ago, and Derek puts his attention back on the target and pulls the trigger to start his stream of water. ]

[Clementine hadn't expected so many other people to join. When she'd agreed to play this game she'd figured it would just be a race between the two of them. This is more than she'd bargained for and it makes her a little uncomfortable. Of course there would be others who wanted in.

She decides to ignore them, focusing instead on Derek's advice, looking down the barrel of the gun. This isn't going to aim the same way a normal gun does, and since she isn't used to it there may be a couple moments of adjustment involved before she's able to get the stream of water where it needs to go.

Don't squeeze it to soon, huh? That's a good method of stopping cheaters from getting a second or two head start. She figures it would take a couple times playing to get a feel for where to aim right away, and Derek has more experience than her in that he's actually done this before.

When the bell rings she squeezes the trigger and finds her aim to be a lot higher than she'd expected. With a muttered curse she lowers it down and adjusts it so it's mostly going through the hole, well aware that others are sure to be far ahead of her already. Maybe she won't come in last as long as she doesn't move off her target.]

[ Derek would've warned Clementine about the aim on these things, except that it seems to be different every time he plays, even if it's at the same county fair as the year before. He, too, struggles with his gun for a second before getting it lined up with the little target. He smirks a little at her curse, not really expecting to hear it out of a young girl and finds that she reminds him just that much more of Cora for it.

Derek's eyes shift up toward the horses on the board, faltering his aim for a second, but he notices that, out of everyone, he and Clementine are at least in the top five, so that's something. Only the winner ends up with a prize, but it's still a fun game, so in his mind, it's still worth playing. He and Clementine are just about neck in neck and one of the horses ahead of theirs slips behind. Derek hears a loud curse at the far end of the game and whoever it is is ranting that their gun isn't shooting right. Bad luck, that.

For a few seconds, he almost wishes that the guns weren't fastened into stands on the counter the way they are; if he and Clementine could both hit the same target, they'd definitely win. Then again, that's probably why the guns are fastened into the stands: to prevent that sort of cheating. ]

Come on...

[ Mostly, that's muttered to himself because he can see the horse that fell behind starting to catch up. He and Clementine are in the first three, but if that horse catches up, they could get shunted back again. ]

[The problem with water guns is that no matter how well you design them (and no one's going to say that the ones in games like this are created for optimal efficiency) they're still shooting water, and water works in specific ways. If the targets were closer, the spray of water would be more solid, but the further out it gets the more the stream starts to splay out. She's getting most of it onto the target, but it still takes some fine tuning to get it in and hold it there. It's important that she doesn't move because resituating it after her aim is knocked off is a pain and it can set anyone back a ways. She's already seen it happen, though the amount of attention she can spare for the other players is limited.

It's just a silly little game, but she can feel her heart pumping in her chest. She doubts she'll win, but mostly she just doesn't want to come in last. Being in the top three wouldn't hurt either, even if that doesn't matter. Her horse is still behind Derek's, which is fine as long as it keeps moving.

This is fun, she realizes, and she didn't expect that.]

[ The game doesn't last a whole lot longer before the bell is ringing and a what looks like a police light starts flashing over everyone's heads.

We have a winner!

Well...it wasn't Derek, he knows that much. It was still fun, though, so he smirks as he looks over at Clementine. ]

I've lost my touch, that's embarrassing. [ He laughs a little and shrugs his shoulders. ] One more time?

[ Why not, if she's interested. He's always loved this game; he could play it forever if it wouldn't be so expensive to try. ]

[The winner hadn't been Clementine either, and admittedly she's a little bummed by that - not so much because she hadn't come in first, but because neither of them had. She thought Derek would have had an edge for sure.

When he makes the offer to play again, she hesitates only a moment. Sure she isn't likely to win this time around either, but it had been admittedly fun to give it a try. She's not going to say as much, but she knows it'll be obvious.]

Yeah, sure. That was pretty embarrassing.

[They'd both done fine, but she'll rib him a little.]

[ Her agreement has him laughing a little as he pulls out his wallet again, his attention on the young girl beside him. ]

Okay, well I'll try not to be so embarrassing this time around.

[ The levity in his tone suggests that he's amused rather than offended or put out. They're at a carnival right now; the point is for people to have fun and she's a kid, so that goes double, in Derek's opinion. He certainly isn't going to begrudge her a joke at his expense.

Paying the woman running the game, Derek looks around, curious to see how long they might have to wait for a next game to start before his attention turns back to Clementine and he cocks his eyebrows with an amused grin. ]

You realize that means I'm now obligated to beat you in this race, right? So that I'm not such an embarrassment?

Losing to me is pretty bad, yeah. Considering I've never played it before today.

[Beating him would be fun, but she's not going to throw a fit if she doesn't come in first this time either. Like she said, she's new at this. It's the thrill of the game itself that's enjoyable and she didn't expect to have this much fun today. She's able to feel like a kid for once without being treated like one.

And she deserves to not have to take things so seriously for at least one day, right? She may never be able to fully relax, but this does help.]

What do you get if you win, anyway?

Hey now, I haven't played it in probably longer than you've been alive, in my defense!

[ All the same, though, he's laughing a little because she does technically have a point. He shouldn't be losing to someone who's playing for the first time and his only excuse is that he's pretty rusty. ]

Besides, there is such a thing as beginner's luck, you know, Clementine.

[ His eyes shift up toward the prizes strung up or sitting on shelves along the back wall of the game. Most of them are horses. Some of them are bears. Still a few others are other assorted dolls and stuffed animals, but most of them relatively small. Derek looks back at Clementine. ]

One of those up there. I don't know if this one works the same way as the one at the fair back home when I was a kid, but at that one, if you wanted to hold out for a bigger prize, you could tell the game runner and just keep playing until you won five times. Then they'd give you one of those huge things I've seen around. I don't see any of them here, though, so maybe you can only win the little ones. I'm not really sure.

A huge stuffed animal would probably be more of a hassle than anything anyway. [One bear is already more than she'd intended to get.] I don't want to have to worry about finding enough space.

[That's assuming she'd even win anything, and the chances of that aren't high. She leans against the counter next to her gun, staring out at the targets.]

I don't know how great my luck with this sort of thing is.

[Or how great her luck is period. Some would say she's lucky to still be alive, but is she really? If that's the case she didn't need all that "luck" to herself.]

Real luck would be having my gun lock into place right on target so I don't have to worry about accidentally moving it off.

I don't blame you. Some of those things are unnecessarily big.

[ Derek's attention shifts away from her as someone sits down beside him on his other side. The seats are starting to fill up now, so that's something. They'll get to play again soon. ]

I don't know, you did pretty well for a first try, coming in second like that. That was pretty damn close, if you ask me, Clementine. Or maybe it's skill. Or both. Either way.

[ He grins a little and nods. ]

That would be kind of nice, I agree. But I don't think you moved it off the target too much...you did really well last round. So either you didn't move it off very much or everyone else moved it off entirely too much.

I don't know if not moving counts as skill. [It's something you get used to when hiding from both zombies and other people, though, so maybe it is. She's not getting her hopes up for this next round, in any case. For all she knows, this next group could be better at this game than the last one.]

I'm happy not to come in last.

[She has some pride in her ability to aim, at least. She'd honed that ability with weird guns that kicked back a lot more than this one did. She'd like to see someone else fire a shotgun at age eleven. Those things knocked her off her feet at first.]

You ready?

introductory mingle: SAMPREMI

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sorry for the delay

no worries

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