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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Derek gives her a sheepish sort of smile, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "It's good of you to not look at me like I have three heads, because I can imagine you probably feel a bit like that right now. Sorry, that's probably a lot all at once when you don't really have reference points, yet," he says, looking appropriately apologetic. Hey, he did warn her that he didn't think he would be terribly good at this, so he does have that to fall back on, he supposes. That doesn't make it easier for her to have to digest all the information he's throwing at her, though. It seemed less complicated before he said it out loud.

To her question, Derek takes pause. He hasn't actually...well. He hasn't checked, come to think of it. "You know, I don't know? I mean, probably. If not the exact things I've said — movies and television channels, I mean — then probably some variation of it, based on the technology they've given us. They're up to date, in any case, so I would think so, but I haven't actually looked around or checked. I'm really more of a book guy than anything else, so it hasn't really occurred to me to look into that sort of entertainment yet..." he admits.

He gives a thoughtful facial shrug then. He could look now, probably, if she felt like it. It isn't like he has any other plans, anyway, and unless she does, it might be a good use of their time. "I'm not doing anything right now...if you're not, either, we could always go look?" he offers.

If only he knew what strange turns her life had taken up to this point. Sure, plenty of things surprise her or confuse her, but she's certainly not going to look at him like he's crazy. He'd probably think she was the crazy one if she told him she'd been bitten by a wolf and cursed to turn into a feral beast every full moon.

"Well, up to date inasmuch as having what you recognize. Perhaps there are things here from both our futures as well." Wouldn't that be interesting? Something beyond two hundred years in her future!

"I think that is a marvelous idea! You have been such a wonderful guide into these matters thus far, and I would be pleased to accompany you on the search."

"Well, yes," Derek concedes. He hasn't really thought about that a whole lot because technology isn't really his thing. Unless something thrusts it upon him, the likelihood that he'll recognize future tech is pretty low, but she does have a good point there. "That's a fair point. But, point being...if they're at least up to date with what I recognize, then I'm sure they have movies around here somewhere. We'd just have to find them," he assures her with a warm smile.

Her quick response and enthusiasm has Derek smiling. He's probably smiled more in the past twenty four hours than he did the whole three weeks in the Complex and, before that, well. Beacon Hills hadn't really given him much to smile about over the past decade or so, really.

"All right, well, let's go check it out then. There's bound to be something around here somewhere," he says and, because it wouldn't exactly be conducive to lose her in the crowd, he offers her an arm.

Oh, he knows of offering a lady his arm! Some things do transcend time and place, don't they? Pleased, she slips her hand around the crook of his elbow.

"And if we should find there is not such a thing, at least we were able to better explore this place." She's still getting used to the size of the place and all it has to offer. She's quite sure it's bigger than London, though she can't know how London will grow from her time of dirt lanes to the city of Derek's future. But the restaurants, malls, and other sources of entertainment are far more vast than she's ever seen before. It feels like it will takes months to explore it all.

Grinning, Derek nods as he looks back at her. "Yeah, exactly," he agrees. And, to Derek, there's nothing better than having a legitimate reason to be looking around and taking in the surroundings. He does it anyway, but it's easier if he's got an excuse to do it beyond the fact that he's interested to know as much as possible about where he is. This way, he has a goal in mind; he's looking for something in particular and if he doesn't find it, well, he's learned what there is around in the mean time.

"So what's it like when you came from? I mean, where are you from, anyway? I might be kind of a history buff, but admittedly I really only pay much attention to twentieth century history, so I don't know much about your time period at all," he says, sounding almost apologetic amongst the genuine curiosity and interest in his query.

"Goodness, how do I start?" she asks with a hint of a smile. It feels strange to talk about her life since she's lived it, and it's all in the past to him anyway. His life is a complete unknown because it's in the future.

"I reside at Bantry House in Lancashire County, England. I was born in 1784 in Yorkshire. My husband Thomas passed away six months ago in a hunting accident in Scotland." Which is the story that had been told, but that no one wanted to believe. They wanted to get to the root of the mystery, which set Cecelia on edge so much that she longed for an escape from her life.

"I live a quiet life. I have been to London to properly come out into society, but it was far too loud and busy for me. Yet now I am in a place that feels ten times as busy!" She lets out a chuckle and raises her gaze to the buildings surrounding them.

"Let's see, what else... we were at war with the French, but we defeated Napoleon at Waterloo and we are sure he will surrender soon. We certainly do not have even half the things you see here. These buildings are massive! Our tallest are probably no more that three or four stories tall? Our streets are dirt or cobblestone, we have no bathrooms like there are here, and no electrically run things either. I still do not know how a microwave functions. Everything here seems so... fast. Perhaps that is not the right word but cooking is fast, bathing is fast, talking to others is fast. At home cooking takes hours or all day. We write letters that take days to be delivered. We take things slow."

Derek could have guessed that she was from England based on the accent, but then again, he imagines that most Americans had that same accent back then. It isn't like she was from terribly far off from the early colonizers, after all. His brow creases with sympathy when she says that her husband was killed. "I'm sorry," he says sincerely. He knows what it feels like to lose people he loves. Maybe not on the same level as a husband and wife, but he's lost more people than he's been allowed to keep, so grief is no stranger to Derek Hale. He imagines that's the reason why she's here. There were times when Derek would have done anything to escape his grief after Paige's death, after the fire, after Laura, after Erica and Boyd. All he managed was to learn that once you start running, you can't ever stop, and the pain never really leaves you.

To her comment about the business of this place, Derek laughs a little. "Yeah I can imagine that must be a little jarring by comparison," he agrees with a little smirk. This place is bustling and he wonders whether anywhere was as busy as this back in the 1800s if it wasn't right smack in the middle of a war. Somehow, he doubts it. Everything must have been largely quieter and more reserved back then. To Derek, that sounds peaceful. But then...he's on the outside looking in and the grass is always greener, as the saying goes.

His eyebrows lift and eyes widen a little with surprise. He'd completely forgotten that she's from a time period that did, in fact, have some pretty famous wars and battles and he huffs a surprised laugh at the mention of Napoleon. He's seen shows on the History Channel about Waterloo...Cecelia has actually been there. "Sorry, just...yeah, he'll surrender in July," he says with a crooked sort of grin. He's talking to someone who lived in the times he's only ever and will only ever be able to watch on the television in documentaries once in a while. It's kind of it's own brand of incredible. "Sometimes I wish things were still slow," he tells her. "Everything being this fast is convenient, don't get me wrong, but...it can also be really exhausting to keep up with," he adds.

It isn't that he's ignoring her point that she doesn't know how a microwave works, but well. Neither does Derek. Not really, anyway. He knows you put food in, set a timer, turn it on, and when it's done, the food is ready, but he doesn't know how it works, or anything. He's never bothered to find out or ask. "Modern times are so busy wondering if they can do things, sometimes they don't stop and wonder whether or not they actually should. Sure, cell phones make it easier to talk to people when you're on the go...but they also make it easier for people to hack in and steal your identity by way of personal information. Or for foreign militaries to spy on one another. Every advancement has its risk-reward factor. I always wondered whether I would like it if I'd been from a long time ago. When things were more simplified and slow and maybe there were more wars, but...your wars were fought with swords and muskets, and canons. Ours are fought with atomic bombs and nuclear weapons. One wrong move in a modern war could end the entire Earth as we know it, so it's like, congratulations on winning the battle while obliterating the whole planet..." he sighs.

"Oh! Now, you see that is so strange to hear you say that. You know what happens, while I can only guess. It makes me want to know everything, but then I worry I might know too much! Should I hear all about the future, or will it be more than I can take? I cannot say." Like all these wonderful inventions she sees. How did they come about and did people love them at first, or hate them? Electric lights must have put candle makers out of business. Did microwaves oust household cooks? History is more than simple facts written in black and white.

As he goes on, she starts to think her instincts were right. Does she really want to hear about all these things if such terrible things can result from it?

"Goodness! You have weapons that powerful? How horrid."

It's something Derek can't say he's ever really had a chance to think about. In spite of all the supernatural happenings around him as long as he's been able to remember it, Derek's never really faced anyone who could definitively tell him the future. He wishes he could identify with it so that he could offer her advice one way or the other, but he can only speculate. "I don't know, it's not your future specifically, so much as just...the future, so it's a lot to take in at once. I probably shouldn't have said, actually, but it sort of slipped out," he replies, having the grace to look sheepish for his mistake.

To her response, Derek nods. "Yeah, tell me about it. The sorts of weapons we have now are too powerful. The world is a ticking time bomb, now. But, I mean, on the other hand, there's really great things about advancements, too. Like in the medical field. There's things we can do now that probably were completely off the radar in your time. Medications, surgical procedures. There's good with the bad, but yeah, it's a lot."

He stops walking then, approaching what looks to be a security guard at the festival as they're on their way out of it and he asks for directions to anything that might resemble a theater. Derek is pleased to learn that there is, in fact, such a thing and he smiles over at Cecelia. "All right, this way. Hopefully they'll have something of interest playing. I haven't been to the movies, Jesus...since I was in high school."

"There are so many things you say that I do not understand," she says with a shake of her head. "Through no fault of your own, mind you." She doesn't want him feeling guilty about it, or trying to change the way he speaks simply for her, but what is "the radar," anyway?

Looking up at him, she smiles and nods her head, making a mental note that apparently people in his time are more liberal with using the name Jesus as an exclamation. It's not that people never said oh, God! in her time as well, but it was usually in extreme situations.

"When did your education end? And how old are you now?"

Derek's forgotten himself for a moment. There are going to be plenty of things he says as second nature that make reference to things she won't understand. Her point reminds him to pay closer attention to things. "Oh, sorry... I promise not to be offended if you want to ask for clarification," he replies warmly. "I imagine sometimes things that seem second nature for me might reference things with which you're not familiar and that's not very fair if I'm trying to help you learn, right?"

He hums a little, frowning. The last year of high school had been in a whole new school across the country. He doesn't like to think about that adjustment period on top of everything else he'd been going through at the time. "I graduated high school when I was seventeen. Now I'm twenty-seven," he replies. "I never went to college or anything."

It hadn't ever interested him. Very few things did back then, because he was still largely wrapped up in his own grief and the lethargy that had come with it had been stifling.

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introductory mingle: SAMPREMI

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