introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

[riverviewmod]

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Introductory Log and Flower Festival Celebration
when: April 2nd - April 15th
where: In several different locations in the downtown area of the Inhabited City.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

flower festival

In the days leading up to April 2nd, residents new and old may notice advertising around the city, everywhere from digital screens to paper flyers pasted on blank walls, all advertising an upcoming holiday: The Flower Festival. Celebrating springtime, beauty, joy, and togetherness, the festival heavily features floral themes and dancing. The advertising mentions that on April 10th, a paid holiday, there will be a Blossom Picnic, as well as lists of various public dances at clubs or other open venues, and adult raves.

a celebration of spring

The Flower Festival's main event is the Blossom Picnic on April 10th, but it also features traditions of sharing food and drink, and dancing that span over the course of the whole two weeks. There are a large variety of events going on throughout the city, from dancing lessons in any wide variety of traditional dances, to old-fashioned sock hops, to adult raves complete with mild party drugs. Feel free to use the prompts below or create your own event at any point during the festival, and if your character creates an event and hosts it in a top-level, you can submit that thread for extra bonus points.

i. blossom picnic

The main event that kicks off the second week of the Flower Festival is the Blossom Picnic on April 10th. A relaxed and low-key event, it draws several thousand people every year to the spacious Riverview Central Park, where there is a generous lawn lined with various blossoming trees, and families, found families, lovers, and groups of friends are encouraged to lay out a picnic blanket and share food. There will be live bands playing (but not loudly enough to distract from conversation and peacefully watching the petals flutter in the wind), a variety of demonstrations of traditional cultural dances from many different realities and planets, and a ton of ice cream vendors. This is an excellent festival not only for celebrating togetherness with the people who are already important, but for mingling and making new friends.

Characters may either pack their own lunches or they can purchase pre-packed Blossom Festival lunches. Stores and street markets are carrying a wide variety of specialty food that is only available at this time of year - predominantly pastries, an assortment of types of candies, and ice cream treats all in various floral flavors, as well as a sort of ambrosia salad based around a sweet rose-flavored cream and a native fruit that is bright green and tastes like a combination of peach and citrus.

ii. dancing lessons

Starting on April 2nd, there will be dancing lessons offered almost everywhere you look! From partner dances to group dances to line dances; sexy and sensual or innocent and childlike - almost any type of dance you can imagine is represented, from any reality or planet that has people in Riverview Quarantine.

Additionally, the Riverview Central Community Center has multiple rooms blocked off so anyone who knows a dance from home can teach it to others in their community - sharing is caring, after all. Characters are welcome to block off one of these rooms and offer lessons in any dance they happen to know from home (and these sorts of thread starters would be eligible for the mingle AC Point bonus)!

iii. flower festival dancing

This is pretty simply what it says on the tin - in almost every club, community center, or other public space, there will be dancing at almost all hours of the day or night, formal and informal. Musicians bring out their instruments and play in the street for demonstrations of cultural dances and music at the same time as clubs are offering VIP cover charges for exclusive dances, and you can find anything in between.

There are also many low-cover-charge raves that allow under-18s so younger characters can stay up all night and dance like crazy. The legal drinking age in Riverview Quarantine is 14, and so anyone over 14 can enter and indulge in a few drinks, dancing, and playing tag with a non-intoxicating version of the colored powder featured at the adult raves. There is copious amounts of security on site to ensure that everyone is safe, as well as nurses and off-duty police officers to offer advice or care for anyone who overindulges out of lack of experience.

Grab a partner, a group of friends, or just cruise and mingle the various dancing events.

Characters may also notice that most of the street markets and clothing shops are offering clothing that features floral patterns, flowers as accessories, and that show a lot of skin - for men, women, and anyone in between!

iv. adult raves

Advertised on flyers and digital screens around the city, made to pop as if they were under blacklight, is a series of adult raves that are happening in various large empty warehouse spaces around the city, including one that is listed as the danger rave and hosted in an abandoned factory outside the inhabited city walls. With bouncers at the door to ensure that anyone entering is 18+, the raves are comfortably adult in nature. Clothing is optional, showing skin is encouraged, and there are a lot of neatly tucked away spaces for attendees to get some time alone with one or more than one person, as well as spaces intended for orgies. The atmosphere is sex-positive and non-judgemental, open to any orientation or preference, with various forms of protection available for free, however, to ensure that everyone plays safe there are sober security teams out en masse at all premises to oversee the events.

(CW: DRUG USE) In each location, there is one specific room where attendees can enter, and dance or play tag with brightly colored powder that contains small amounts of a legal party drug commonly available in Riverview, which is absorbed through the skin. Not much more intoxicating than having a few beers, the effects of the drug are a pleasant low-key buzzing euphoria, positive sensitivity to touch, a heightening of desires for intimacy, and a mild lowering of inhibitions. Once a character has been hit with the powder, the color lingers on the skin so other attendees can know who has partaken, but once the powder makes contact with a surface it deactivates, meaning that partakers can safely dance with non-partakers without sharing the intoxicating effects.

Please be sure to warn in subject lines for any threads involving drug use. And remember, there is always security to intervene and make sure everyone is safe.

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 Flower Festival, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: third image by Steve Goad; other images found on uncredited on Pinterest or Google images - please let the mod know if you find credit!

navigation

Comments

Roomies being roomies

[ragnarsson]

[Tony is just sitting there at the table, looking somewhat like a corpse that someone has warmed up. The coffeepot is brewing away in the background He doesn't even blink and Ivar is tempted to check to see if he's still breathing. He'd mentioned to the Viking before that he'd go days without sleep. Well, if this was the result, Ivar was glad that he didn't have such troubles.

He crawls up to the table, climbing into the chair right next to Tony. When that fails to get a reaction, he reaches over, and gently knocks his fist on the top of Tony's head.]

Hello? Anyone alive in there?

snorts.

[amelioraate]

[ He got high. Tony Stark got himself fucking high, by accident yes, but still. There is a hollow feeling settling into his chest where he hears the familiar drum of failurefailurefailure against his ribs, but he can't really focus on it right now. His head hurts, and his hands want to shake and, fuck, he wants to shake, but he can't because--

Actually, he doesn't know. Maybe shaking would get rid of the snaking curl of want in him, maybe it would keep him occupied from thoughts.

Honestly, the drugs were enough like alcohol to remind him what he was missing. Just like that, years of sobriety gone. Just like--]

Holy shit! [ Yeah, congrats, Tony might just nearly fall out of the chair when you knock on his head Ivar.] Mother fucking --- fuck! That-- shit. Wow, okay. Heartattacks in the morning, that's just--- just great. Actually, can you try that again? Maybe succeed this time in scaring me to death?

[ What self loathing? What are you talking about?]

[ragnarsson]

[Whatever Ivar was expecting, it wasn't that. Tony seems to snap back from wherever he was stranded a million miles away from. He starts to fall out of the chair, but quick as a flash, one of Ivar's strong hands is there to drag him back, and plunk him down securely in his seat.

Ivar looks him over now that his eyes are clearer. He looks haunted, a man possessed by his own thoughts. Ragnar used to get that look sometimes, going somewhere inside his own head that his son couldn't follow.]

You look like a hog sitting in ice.

[In other words, like death warmed over.]

[amelioraate]

[ Careful there, Ivar, your hand might have some gold glitter on it now thanks to terrible life choices, that god you like so much. And trust Tony, it's a bitch to get out.

However, he does flash him a thankful look because, falling out of a chair? That was not what he was after this morning, nope. Unless, you know, it really did end in a coma. Or something.]

Uhhh.. that reference actually makes no sense to me at all. Cold bacon? Frozen pig testicles? Are you saying I have blue balls?

[ This is him diverting, yes. ]

[ragnarsson]

[He's going to be all sparkly now. Whoopee. He tries to brush the gold glitter off and only succeeds in spreading it around. Ivar explains the reference, which probably got lost about the time people stopped sharing living space with their animals.]

Kattegat gets very, very cold in the winter. The livestock have to be brought inside. If they stay outside, they could freeze to death standing up. And if you've ever seen a pig after it's been stuck outside in snow and ice for hours on end, you'll know it's the most miserable looking creature you've ever seen in your life.

[He fixes Tony with a stare, the kind that says Ivar's trying to look right inside his head. He reads people, it's just what he does naturally.]

So, little pig, why do you look so miserable?

[amelioraate]

[ That is the fun of glitter, Ivar. It never really goes away. Tony is pretty sure that he is going to be leaving trails of the stuff behind him for weeks (it doesn't help that his bed is also full of glitter thanks to a god of mischief).

As Ivar explains what he means with the saying, Tony's eyebrow starts to go up. Part of him wants to be insulted at being likened to a pig but, really, it's not the first time that it has happened. At least Ivar is a bit kinder in his comparison.]

Vikings, right. Cold and such. So basically, not blueballs, but rather misery. I should let you know misery and I are old friends, we have been scandalously intimate for almost as long as self-loathing and I have been together.

[ It is a lot more forward that he would usually be, all things considered, but he is tired and he knows enough about Ivar that bullshitting him probably won't work. ]

I am at least the pig that went to the market. Maybe pick up a nice cheese or something to go with dinner. [ Does that make sense to you? Probably not, oh well.] I would say a nice wine, but that is half the problem right there.

[ragnarsson]

[Ivar reaches up to brush a hand through his hair and unknowingly trails more glitter through it. When he realizes what is going on, the entire floor is going to get a very thorough vacuuming. He's about to start a war against glitter. Only one of them is going to come out on top here.

Misery and self-loathing. Of course Tony would find a way to cling to both of those. In the short time they've been acquainted, Ivar's come to sense that the flippant confidence that lies on the surface is just hiding whatever he doesn't want people to see below that. Maybe if he was a kinder sort, Ivar might be inclined to try and see if he can fix him. But why fix someone when it's so much easier to work with their flaws?]

Stop moping. What's done is done, so sitting here and thinking 'Woe is me' is going to solve nothing. If there's a problem, figure out a way to solve it.

[The reference to the nursery rhyme goes completely over his head, but at least he understands the second half involving wine.]

Is that all? Alcohol has caused this? [He sounds a bit incredulous. While alcoholism might be present among the Vikings, Ivar doesn't particularly get what it entails as a disease. Among his people, not to drink meant you were less of a man. Everyone drank, so to consider it something to be sorrowful over was a bizarre state to be in.]

[amelioraate]

[ If he were a lesser man, Tony might cackle at the state of Ivar's glitter-covered self, but as it stands he would rather not. Mainly because he is also in the same boat and probably will be for some time.

Had Ivar tried to 'fix' Tony, he would have been met with some more sarcasm and scathing remarks that Tony has pulled together specifically for dealing with people who happen to see past his facades. Well, most people, there were some that managed to get past that, but in this place? It was a whole hell of a lot easier to pretend that you were fine than to dwell on the fact that everything you knew was falling apart and it was probably all your fault.

So Ivar's advice? It makes Tony laugh.]

Solid idea, I agree. But--- do they have alcoholism where you are now? Like, a steady dependency on something that kills you as often as it aids you, or is that like a new thing? I don't know, either way, alcohol is part of the problem, but really the monster at hand is addiction because, thankfully, I managed to not drink just get attacked by a spiteful rainbow. Which, if you don't understand addiction probably seems utterly ridiculous.

[ Hell, Tony understands addiction and even he finds it ridiculous.]

[ragnarsson]

[This man is damaged on the inside. Just how badly is up for debate, but he must be doing something right, or he'd already be dead. Tony gets an eye roll from Ivar.]

You know, we had alcoholism in 816. We also had drugs, addiction, war, and sex, so it's not like that stuff got invented with your generation.

[He slides out of his chair and goes over to one of the lower cabinets. He's taken to storing some of the cutlery and glasses in a location where he doesn't have to stretch to reach them. Taking out two mugs, he leans up, and takes the coffeepot down, pouring two cups. Getting them back over to the table involves pushing them forward, taking a few steps with his arms, and then pushing them forward again until he gets back to the table. He sets one down in front of Tony and starts pouring the sugar into his own.]

What I say is be stronger than what you are right now. You're fighting a war inside and the only way to win is for one side to conquer the other. Either you'll get the better of your addiction or it gets the better of you. There's no middle ground here.