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

Wikus van der Merwe | OTA (though most of the prompts are for floor mates. He'll get out more soon!)

[onthehalfshell]

v. Roommates - Floor 8

Wikus sits on the foot of the bed that's been assigned to him, staring blankly at whatever's in front of him, face slack and expressionless. He's certainly a sight to behold: hair patchy, bandages all over, absorbent pads at his temples. His left shoulder and arm have been almost entirely wrapped in sterile dressings, but there's nothing to cover the two remaining and very alien fingers on that hand. His mismatched yellow eye is equally on display.

At least the filthy rags he'd arrived in were replaced by a plain white t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, though there are already several red specks on his chest and back where fresh blood is soaking through.

Definitely a healthy man here.

He should probably do something, maybe look around or lie down and sleep, but he can't gather together enough sense or willpower to do even the simplest of tasks.

He's had a rough couple of days. Really rough. And now he's just… exhausted. Physically, mentally, emotionally, he's got nothing left at the moment. He feels empty.

It's actually kind of peaceful, in a hollow sort of way. This room is peaceful. Quiet. The bed is soft. He’s actually clean. It's all seems very, very strange, like it's been years since he last slept in a nice safe bed and not less than a week.

Chances are he's actually lying in a gutter in the grip of transformation-induced fever dreams, but the peace is nice while it lasts.

v. Roommates/Wildcard
Wikus is going to be spending the majority of the festival moping at 'home’. If you'd like a less specific prompt than above, floormates are likely to find him: staring miserably at food and refusing to eat when others are around; huddled in bed even in the afternoon; irritably treating blood stains on his clothes and sheets in the bathroom sink; taking showers when he expects everyone to be asleep…

If you have another idea, feel free to hit me up, roomie or otherwise!

i. Blossom Picnic

It's the day of the Blossom Picnic and Wikus is actually out and about, and greatly regretting his decision.

He lurks at the edges of crowds, like a little dark storm cloud in a sea of rainbows. Looking across the park at all the happy couples and parents and children, he can't help feeling bitter. That was his dream there. Happy picnics with his wonderful wife, adorable little mini-Tanias and Wikuses in their future.

But he doesn't have any of that now, and he's not sure he ever will. So he sinks deeper into his oversized hoodie (he's not a small man, but picking several sizes too large made it easier to fit his mutated arm), hood up, shoulders hunched, hands stuffed in the belly pocket, refusing to make eye contact, and tries to leave the area without attracting attention.

Floor 8

[getjackedup]

[It felt a little too much like everything was too organized. Bleached clean. Which if they've been collecting people who got "lost" for some time, then it makes sense, but it doesn't make it easier. He's lost everything he's had for himself, everything he had managed to keep, and now he had to rebuild it all over again. At least rebuilding was something he was used to.

But he enters the room again after showering up and the man he sees sitting on the last bed in the room makes him immediately think abextra--the damage done by a failed shift. He's bloody and distant and Tolemi has no idea who he is or what put him in that situation. It's not his problem. They are incidental roommates brought together by pure serendipity.

So he moves to his bed and drops the bag he's gotten for his toiletries onto it. It's not his damn problem.]

Man, grab a blanket or something. You look like you're one wrong breath from going into shock.

Content: slight body horror, Afrikaans swearing

[onthehalfshell]

[It takes a moment for the knowledge that someone else is in the room and that they're talking to him to sink through the fog miring Wikus's brain.

He jolts like someone coming out of a trance and his head snaps around to stare at the stranger standing several beds over from his.]

What? Fok-

[Suddenly self-conscious of his visible mutations, he actually does grab at the blanket on his bed, dragging it over his head to make an impromptu hooded cape. He clutches it closed with his human hand. All the fingertips are bandaged; he's down to zero fingernails now.]

Who the fok are you?

[getjackedup]

[He's been sworn at and more than plenty of it himself to let that get to him, but what he said definitely got to this guy. He raises an eyebrow at him, but isn't going to comment on the blanket-grabbing just to be an ass.]

Someone who got dropped here out of nowhere, just as you. But I'm not the one looking like about to keel over.

[onthehalfshell]

I'm not gonna keel over. [His voice is slightly muffled coming from his blanket cave.]

I'm just tired, man. I've had a hard fokken few days.

[Only a few days. Not even a full week. And yet his incident in District 9 felt like a lifetime.]

[getjackedup]

Whatever you say man. [Tolemi ain't believing that, but he's not gonna call the guy a liar to his face. He'll just eye said blanket mound with a very disbelieving brow and move on to finishing putting his toiletries away. It's not his business, he shouldn't be getting involved. If he finds a dead body in the body then it's his own fault for not standing in the hospital.]

I thought magical technology around here cures everything.

[onthehalfshell]

Not this. [The lump of blankets slowly moves up the bed until Wikus is lying on his side with his back to Tolemi. He lets out a long sigh like a deflating balloon. It'll probably be awhile before he feels like moving again.]

...Not yet.

i

[genice]

Makkachin is the one who ends up bringing Victor in contact with this man: this person, at least, all tucked up in his oversized hoodie and looking like he's making his defeated retreat from the picnic today. Victor isn't the person to butt in on everyone's business. For one, he doesn't have the time for that; for another, he lacks the inclination.

But he's in a better mood after cooldown time on an actual planet with Actual Oxygen and yes, earlier on, rolling blackouts and brownouts, but no imminent technical death. Which is enough of a relief that he's feeling more relaxed and generally charitable, even if talking to someone trying to clearly avoid sensitivities about the tendency is probably not strictly polite.

"Lurking around like this on such a nice day... crowds getting to you?" Makkachin whines and wags his tail, cocking his head to the side and uncertainly looking up at Wikus.

[onthehalfshell]

Wikus hunches up further at the sound of a voice, glancing up enough only to determine that yes, he is the one being addressed.

"I'm not lurking, man," he says, a bit peevishly. "I'm just walking."

He looks down at the puffball wagging at him, and somehow something as normal as a pet dog seems way more out of place than any of the people. "...Cute dog."

[genice]

He's mildly surprised this man isn't more of a teenager, to be honest. Only once he's looking up at him briefly. Teenagers are the people he's used to this body language from for the most part.

Settling on his dog as a better topic, Victor likewise looks down to Makkachin. Makkachin, who seems to have heard cute and taken a step toward Wilkus, wail wagging a little faster, sniffing. "His name's Makkachin," Victor says, smiling in spite of himself. "He especially loves when people scratch behind his ears."

[onthehalfshell]

It's sad when a grown man - older than Victor by a fair chunk even! - has the bearing of a teenager, but the disenfranchised youth are particularly skilled at antisocial lurking.

At the mention of ear scratches, Wikus finds himself glancing up and down between Makkachin and his owner.

"I can pet him?" he asks for confirmation, as if it's hard to believe someone would let him. Honestly, he's actually surprised that the dog isn't barking or growling at him. Subconsciously he'd been expecting it to be like a horror movie, where animals always know about the monster before anyone else.

Of course, Prawns aren't really monsters, are they? (But maybe he is.)

[genice]

Makkachin has also been introduced to and used to far more alien smelling and looking aliens than this poor man, not that Victor knows that's going on, and not that Makkachin can comment on any of it. He reacts more to intent than anything else; Wikus isn't trying to attack. To Makkachin, that's enough to make him a potential friend.

To Victor, who pays attention to how his dog interacts with others, it means much the same.

"Yes, of course. He loves making new friends. He also loves if you scratch right over his haunches, but the ears? I've seen Makkachin melt for a good ear scratching." Melt being more of a flopping over or leaning into the person giving him ear scratchings, but it all lead to about the same result of blind canine adoration.

[onthehalfshell]

Wikus is still hesitant as he crouches down and reaches out a hand to scratch behind Makkachin's ears.

It's his human hand, of course, the other still buried in his hoodie pocket. Even that hand isn't entirely normal, though. The hospital has provided him with little caps to keep his soft, nailless fingertips protected. The caps don't look wholly like regular fingernails, but they do allow for some pretty good ear scratches.

"Heh." The sound falls out of him almost without volition, and a smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. "Good boy..."

floor 8

[winscenario]

Jim's been here long enough to get settled into his room, but not nearly enough to know all his roommates yet. It's kind of weird, he'll have to admit; even back at the Academy, he never shared a room with this many people, and he's not all that sure he'll adapt well to it. Bones, he doesn't mind. They did share a room at the Academy, but the issue here is the eight other people in the room.

He'll get used to it eventually. Maybe. He won't know until he tries, and that starts with at least getting acquainted with the other roommates.

Walking into the room to find one of them sitting by the foot of his bed looking the worse for wear isn't exactly how he pictured it happening. He stops near the door before finally clearing his throat and offering a simple greeting. "Hi."

And then, because he apparently doesn't know how to mind his own business, he gestures vaguely at the guy's clothes. "You should get checked out. Looks like you're bleeding." Jim's seen plenty of weird alien races but he's sure none of them are supposed to bleed through their pores.

[onthehalfshell]

Wikus looks up at Steve when he clears his throat, blinking slowly, expression still rather blank, as if he's taking a long time to process that someone is actually speaking to him. The mention of bleeding has his brow furrowing, and he looks down at his chest.

Tugging at the neck of his shirt, he peers down at his chest, frowning at the new patches of exoskeleton that are starting to break through his skin.

"What's the point in bandaging me up if I'm gonna keep fokken bleeding from new spots?"

It's hard to tell if he's actually answering Jim or if he's just thinking out loud.

[winscenario]

Jim doesn't stop while waiting for Wikus to answer. He's there to get a few things and not press onto some topic with one of his new roommates, even if the guy looks like a complete mess right now. Jim figures he wouldn't have been released if he were dying, though. At least he hopes so.

"I was thinking more along the lines of stopping the bleeding altogether," Jim says, fully aware that he doesn't have the information needed to say if that's even possible at all. "If you want to, I know someone who could try to help. He could take a look, at least. Wouldn't hurt."

If he wants to, of course. Jim's not going to impose. It's just a simple offer Wikus is welcome to accept if and whenever he feels like.

[onthehalfshell]

"If they could they would have."

It's not that Riverview's doctors aren't working on the issue, they're just a bit stumped about his problem at the moment.

Finally he blinks and looks up, actually focusing on Jim, as if he just realized he was having a conversation.

"Uh, hey."

[winscenario]

"Alright. Your choice."

Jim's not about to push him on that, though if his opinion counted for something, no doctors here can't possibly compare to Bones. He's sure the doctor would at least have a lot better insight at whatever this guy's problem is, even if it might take him a while to find a solution.

He looks back to him with a smile, taking note of his strange aspect, but honestly Jim has seen plenty weird things in his travels so it doesn't bother him much.

"Hi. Jim Kirk, by the way."

[onthehalfshell]

The smile is nice. Looks genuine and everything, and Wikus finds himself feeling a bit more at ease. He can't muster up a smile himself at the moment, but he does manafr an introduction.

"Wikus. Wikus van der Merwe."

His brain starts catching up with the rest of the conversation now that he's actually focussed. "You know a doctor or something?"

[inebriety]

This is definitely a man that looks like he's been through the wringer. At least Tony had a far less visible health issues, this guy looked like he'd been hit by a truck and then injected with an experimental formula. Tony should be interested in the fingers and the odd eye, but he only observes them with a detachedness that speaks of his own problems.

"If you're not going to go to a hospital can you at least make sure you don't bleed all over the place?"

Tony looks like a tired and slightly underweight adult male. He's changed out of the clothes he arrived in to a pair of jeans and a plain shirt so there's little that betrays his circumstances, but the pile that makes up Iron Man lies next to his bed on the floor means there's at least something that can be connected to him if Wikus had paid attention to his floormates.

[onthehalfshell]

Wikus blinks a few times, taking in Tony. After a moment his brow furrows in confusion. "I'm not bleeding-"

Glancing down at his shirt, he notices that he is, in fact, bleeding. As heavily as they'd bandaged him up before he left the hospital, that can only mean he has new sores opening up.

"Fok me..."

[inebriety]

Tony raises an eyebrow and whatever this guy is on, he wants some. Even if alcohol is his usual drug of choice. "You must be on the really good stuff."

He still doesn't make any move to help the guy. Maybe if asked, but otherwise he's content to just watch since there doesn't seem there's any immediate harm to doing nothing.

[onthehalfshell]

"I fokken wish." It'd be nice to be less aware of his situation for awhile. But he's almost gotten used to the constant itch under his skin, and he's pretty sure his nerves are dying or moving or something, because his lesions don't hurt half as much as they look like they should.

He sighs loudly and twists to show Tony his back. More spots of blood stain the shirt in a sloppy line from his neck to his left hip. "Is it the back too?"

[inebriety]

"Yeah. You can't tell?"

Tony supposes if you're in pain all the time it would get harder to differentiate one ache from another. It would be just another sign that things royally suck and weren't going to get better any time soon. Or he's projecting his own issues.

"Do we have extra bandages around? I haven't looked around properly yet."

[onthehalfshell]

"It all feels like the world's worst rash. Doesn't change much when they push through." He's also too tired to really notice if one part of him starts aching a little more than the rest.

Looking back and forth in case a first aid kit easily presents itself, Wikus gives a shallow shrug. "No clue, I just got here."

He should... Probably go look. Before he bleeds on something important. He heaves himself slowly up off the bed, like his bed was covered in tar instead of sheets.