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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Looking around for the source of the advice, Caitlin kind of can't miss him, between the wheelchair's loud decor and the surrounding large stuffed animals. Her eyebrows lift a little with interest. Clearly, he's figured something out, whether it's this game, another, or all of them, for all she knows.

"How exactly do you put a spin on a dart, though...?" she asks, sounding a little confused. A football, sure; bowling ball, she could manage. But a dart is small and is thrown with the fingers, rather than followed through with one's whole arm. The idea of trying to put a spin on something so small with an unfamiliar sort of hold — she's only played darts a few times, usually when she's intoxicated and isn't playing to win, anyway — is a little confusing. Which isn't to say she doesn't think it's probably good advice; she imagines that it is. She just isn't...really sure how to follow it.

He figured out how to throw objects with tremendous force and skill a long time ago. Combine that with a competitive spirit and he'd demolished most of the less complicated games. He rolls forward, nearly squashing Caitlin's toes before he comes to a stop. He's still working out the finer details of how to manuever around in his wheelchair.

"You flick your wrist, the same way you do like you're throwing a knife." Realizing that perhaps she's not thrown one of those either in her life, he demonstrates with an overhand motion, sort of the same motion he'd use if he was tossing a ball.

Dubiously, Cailtlin's eyebrows arch at his bit of advice. He says it like she should already know how to do that and she very much doesn't. Caitlin hasn't ever really been the fighter. She's always been the fixer. The other guys, they go out in the field and they do the heavy lifting, in that sense, but Caitlin's there to fix people up afterward. Sure, she'll help them plan ahead of time, but her forte is the fixing.

And then when he seems to realize the implication in his advice and corrects it with a demonstration, Caitlin's lifted eyebrows shift down to furrow toward the center with confusion. "That looks like what I already did..." she admits. Granted, it's probably different in a subtle enough way that it's too difficult to see it in a mock demonstration, but even with that in mind, she can only go by what she sees...which, unfortunately, doesn't really help, in this case.

"Here. Let me show you." Ivar has very little in the sense of personal space, so he just grabs her arm, and pushes it back, showing her what he means by the demonstration as he pushes and prods her arm to mimic the motions he's just showed her. Only when he's satisfied does he let her go. "See? Now you try."

He sits back in the wheelchair, waiting for her to throw the dart. Hopefully his advice has helped her out a little bit. He's got more patience than most people when it comes to teaching others because of how different he'd had to do things his entire life.

While she isn't entirely comfortable with her personal space being invaded, Caitlin is mindful, at least, of the fact that she inadvertently implied that she was inviting it. So rather than fret about it when he's doing no harm, she allows her focus to settle on the way her arm feels when he moves it. At the prompt that she try it on her own, Caitlin nods a little and takes a deep breath before following the advice and hitting the board.

The dart doesn't bounce off a balloon, this time, instead settling with a heavy thud into the cork board right between the knots of two separate balloons. She sighs. "Well, your advice isn't going to work if I can't hit the thing," she laughs before lining up her last shot. Why is she better at darts when she's drunk? Because she remembers herself being better at darts when she's drunk...what the heck?

Wiggling a little in place in an attempt to force herself to loosen up, Caitlin tries one last time and hits the balloon, using (she thinks, anyway) the technique he's described to her, but once again, the dart bounces off and falls to the ground. "Okay, well you know what? That's fine," she says flippantly, turning to the man again. "They're rigged, anyway. Thank you for your help. You tried," she offers with a sheepish smile. "I'm Caitlin."

He watches with interest as she attempts to hit the balloons with the darts. Alas, it appears she is a failure even with his good advice. Fortunately, the amount of stuffed animals he's already amassed means he hands her a medium-sized stuffed yellow rabbit when she's done. "Here. Have a prize anyway." What else is he going to do with all those stuffed creatures? Keep them?

He offers a hand for her to shake when she introduces herself, his arms covered in two leather braces that help support his arms and wrists when he's crawling around. His hands are rough and callused from a lifetime of both getting around from place to place using only his hands and from weapons training. "Ivar. Some call me Ivar The Boneless." The origin of the nickname is pretty apparent with his legs tied together and sitting in a wheelchair.

While the point of trying to play was to try to prove her mother wrong, even after all these years, and she's failed to do that, Caitlin still smiles and takes the stuffed rabbit when he offers it. "Thanks," she says warmly. It isn't quite the same as winning it herself, but if he won it, then someone did and that still kind of proves her mother wrong, to some degree, right? Caitlin's decided that yes, that totally counts. Good enough for her.

"It's nice to meet you," Caitlin replies. She gently and hopefully tactfully avoids the mention of his nickname because, while he doesn't seem too bothered by it, she thinks it sounds kind of mean. "So how did you win all of these, anyway? It looks like you found a game you're pretty good at, right? Or else you're just crazy good at all of them and have been doing rounds making the carnies hate their lives," she jokes.

Ivar's always been very competitive and very good at throwing things. Just ask his brothers. Whenever he's annoyed with them, he throws whatever is closest at their heads in a fit of pique. "Turns out throwing an ax and one of the balls for some of these games requires the same motion." An overhand throw that would either land the blade in an opponent's head or knock milk bottles over. Who would have known?

"Between the food and the games, it's been a good day." After several days of trekking around England and engaging in battle, it was nice to have a bit of a vacation from it all. He was missing his family and wondering how they were going to get along without him to plan for them, but right now, he wasn't too concerned.

Caitlin looks cautiously amused at that comment, lifting her eyebrows with curiosity. "You do a lot of ax throwing?" she asks with a interested tilt of her head as she moves the stuffed animal under one arm to tuck it out of her way without losing it. Interesting talent, she thinks to herself, and hopes it's not being used for anything other than, say, competition.

With a nod, she smiles at that, though. "Yeah, the food is so good, for sure, I'll give it that. I've never even heard of half of this stuff, but it's delicious," she agrees and wholeheartedly so. Caitlin's familiarity with street food is pretty much limited to hotdogs, basically, and if she extends it out to the foods sometimes seen at Flash Day, then she can include a few of the more Americanized foods here — like the pizza and hamburgers and fried...everything. But for the most part, a lot of the things she's seen and tried seem to be from other cultures entirely. It's kind of nice to be able to experience them all in one place.

"Plenty," comes the blithe reply. While he's become aware there is a big difference between himself and the people here, he hasn't quite grasped that he's perhaps a little more battle-ready than most of the local populace. He's always needed a way to defend himself and the ax is his favorite weapon.

"I've never heard of any of it." Medieval food, while having some variation to it, boiled down to mainly two things: meat and vegetables. While there was a number of ways that it could be fixed, it didn't come close to the variation that Ivar had seen here. He's been happily munching away all day. Vikings may be most at home on the battlefield, but what they also love to do is eat.

"Ahh," Caitlin acknowledges with a nod. She's never used one, on the other hand, so throwing one and the technique required to do so is certainly not in her wheelhouse.

Eyebrows arch with surprise to his response and Caitlin's eyes widen a little with interest. "Really, none of it? We must be from really different places because I do recognize a good portion of the options, just not a majority of them."

"I don't doubt it. I'm from Norway. From what I'm guessing is a long time ago for you." He's getting used to this part of the explanation. Judging from his roommates, being over a thousand years behind most everyone else appeared to be a common denominator when interacting with people here.

Caitlin's lips purse together thoughtfully. "Why, what year was it where you're from?" she wonders. To Caitlin, the ability to time travel is a reality, although specific to speedsters back home. It doesn't shock her too terribly that the Portal can do that sort of thing. The reality is there, it just needs to be grasped properly. Maybe the Portal is powerful enough for that.

"816 by the Christian calendar." A long time ago and far away from where he finds himself now. But he's done alright adjusting. Ivar is nothing if not clever, so while he may be confused by the technology and people, he's been getting a crash course on the twentieth century after interacting with everyone.

"What year was it for you?" Everyone seems to be from around the same stretch of years. Ivar wonders if there's a pattern to the way everyone ended up here.

That answer has Caitlin's eyes widening with surprise. That...really?! 816... "Wow..." is all she can manage for a moment while she lets her mind process the gravity of that. This poor man must feel completely out of his element and yet, here he is, handing out prizes won from fair games rather than losing his mind because it's all just too much to take in.

"Oh, uh...it was 2017 for me, actually..." she admits, looking almost apologetic, although she's not entirely sure necessarily why. It's not her fault she's from two thousand years in the future according to him, after all.

Ivar is feeling surprisingly adjusted despite his circumstances. Part of it is just that he's able to adapt easily to things, having always been an outsider his entire life, and thus learning how best to make the most of any situation he finds himself in. Mostly, he's just too ignorant to realize that he should be panicking over all that he doesn't know.

"That seems to be common here." He's yet to meet anyone from close to his time. They're all from so much farther ahead. It was hard to take in.

"2017?" Caitlin asks to clarify. "Huh..." Her voice trails off thoughtfully for a moment as she pauses to think before continuing, "well. I mean, if you think about it, 'modern' people — people from my time — are typically stressed on a more low-grade and constant basis. Rather than feeling stress during a battle or some specific, triggering event, we're just low-key stressed all the time because the world is moving too fast sometimes. Maybe it makes sense that more people from my time feel like they need an escape from their lives than people from your time, if you think about it that way..."

Her tone is lofty and thoughtful, like she's thinking aloud rather than trying to tell him that she thinks people in the future deserve it or necessarily need it more. Her point is that perhaps they just feel they do.

"Huh. Sounds like people got weaker as time went on instead of stronger." Ivar had come from a brutal time period, where even the so-called 'civilized' groups of people would cut the nose and ears off a woman who had been accused of adultery. Only the strong would survive. Ivar himself was tough as nails despite, or perhaps because of, his circumstances. Everyone was.

"Of course, I can see why. You all are that much closer to Ragnarok." Two thousand years in, the end of the gods had to be coming fast.

Her expression falls into something a little more pinched and just this side of offended. He isn't necessarily wrong, but he isn't necessarily right, either, if you ask her. People may have gotten a little weaker from his standpoint, but in her time, they have different threats and completely different things to worry about than they did in his time.

"I think it's a different world and you're neither right nor wrong," she counters gently, trying to sound neutral. "...when is Ragnarok supposed to happen? I didn't realize there was a specified date to that myth..." She's heard of it, but really only in passing back when she'd been taking some elective course in college. She remembers very little except that it's supposed to be something like the end of the world, or a reboot of the world perhaps, is more accurate. That might not even be accurate; it's been a while since she's been in college.

Ivar naturally a rude little bugger. It comes from having no real social skills to speak of. Even by the standards of his own time, there's very few people willing to tolerate his sharp tongue and blunt manners.

"It was always meant to happen at some point in the future. I think two-thousand years from my time qualifies it as being later enough. But I'm no expert. You can ask one of my gods if you want a more exact answer. Loki is here, in this city, right now." Ivar sounds so very pleased by that. This is two gods he's encountered in his lifetime. Now he's living with the god of mischief not more than few beds away from him. As a religious sort of person, it's definitely made the transition of living in the city a lot easier.

"Yes," Caitlin agrees slowly, "but so would three thousand. Four thousand. Five." She can't help pointing that out to him because a part of her gets the impression that he's feeling slightly smug about the idea of Ragnarok hitting the "weak" people of the future of which she happens to be a part.

"I'll pass. Your gods are not my God. I prefer not to mix religions too much; it feels a little blasphemous," she admits. It isn't that Caitlin is particularly devout, because she isn't, but she was raised into one religion and hers says nothing about an end of the world scenario, as far as she can recall. Therefore, it's preferable to her.

Feeling a little put off by the turn of the conversation, Caitlin clears her throat and gives him a small smile. "Anyway, thank you for this," she says, indicating the prize he's given her for the game she hadn't won. It's her subtle and hopefully polite way of beginning to excuse herself.

Caitlin's definitely got him right on the money. Ivar can't help but feel he's a little bit superior to some of the people he's met here. They just seem so easy breakable, as if their lives are too overwhelming for them to fully manage. His own life is hard, it's true, but he's learned how to cope with it. He figures everyone else should do the same.

"You're missing out," is all he says in regards to the talk of religion. He knows such a discussion is perhaps a bit too heavy for a first time conversation. There's that old saying about never discussing religion, politics, and children with people. It holds true even in Viking days as well as the present.

"Glad to have been of service." He'll let her escape the conversation for now. Even though the city is big, it's inevitable that they'll run into each other again.

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introductory mingle: SAMPREMI

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