riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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!

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Bucky isn't really taking part in any of the festivities. Being around that many people just makes him feel like he has a target on his back, never quite sure if there are enemies in the crowd that could quickly turn this celebration into a bloodbath. But there's something about one of the dance classes going on in the park...

It's old style swing dancing, or so says the instructor, and it stirs something uncomfortably familiar inside him. He can't help but watch, creeping ever closer minute by minute, until he's stood right at the edge of the class with an intense look on his face and his hands pushed deeply into hoodie pockets.

He jerks when someone suddenly addresses him, asking him if he has time to answer questions, gaze swivelling to her face in surprise.]

What?

[Smooth.]

What kind of questions?

[ there's a tension in the shoulders of the guy next to lois, something in his posture that reminds her of the soldiers in the platoon she'd been embedded with for a while, but lois still doesn't expect him to be quite so surprised at her question. ]

Like 'what do you think of this place?'.

[He should say no, but he knows from experience that sometimes 'fitting in' can be much less memorable and suspicious. If he converses with her for a while, she's much more likely to forget him, than if he runs off in a panic.]

Uh, sure. I haven't been here that long, though, I don't know much so I probably won't be helpful.

[ she'd definitely remember him if he ran off in a panic—but unfortunately for him, lois has a very good memory when it comes to her sources, even ones that she's just casually interviewed. ]

How long is not long? [ she asks, tone deliberately light in an attempt to put him at ease. even while she's asking it, she's already sticking out one hand for him to shake, offering a smile. ] I'm Lois Lane.

[He's wearing leather gloves and long sleeves despite the clement weather, reaching out to shake her hand briefly even if there's something disquieted in his eyes while doing so.]

Nathan Richardson.

[He plucks the name out of thin air, he's been trying to give a different one to each person he needs to give a name to. Makes him harder to track if nobody knows who to ask for.]

Just a few weeks, coming up on a month.

[ he's nervous, shifty, and lois doesn't think it's just because of her confident and forthright approach, though she's known a man or two who felt threatened by that. ]

Nice to meet you, Mr Richardson. [ given he seems so nervous, lois decides against getting the notebook clark had given her out of the tote she carries over one shoulder. she'll just have to remember what he tells her to write down after this. ]

Do you like it here so far?

[He can't help but wonder why she's asking him these questions. It seems weird to go up to a stranger and just start quizzing them, is she some kind of reporter? An agent? Incredibly lonely? He can't tell.

A half shrug is his main answer, he's going for as non-committal and boring as possible to hopefully put her off.]

It's okay, I guess. After you get over the shock of being on a whole new world.

[ back home, lois used to wear a press badge more often than not, making that kind of questioning obsolete, but given that she hasn't yet decided if she trusts her new boss at the riverview news network enough to want to run this as a story, to investigate with his blessing instead of in her own time, she's decided against wearing one for now. ]

What did they tell you, when you arrived, about why you're here?

[ for a moment, lois glances back at the dance. everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. maybe a different person would be more hesitant to try and look beyond that, to stir things up. when she glances back, her body weight shifted and the angle different than before, the similarities with a man she's only seen from the distance are suddenly impossibly striking. too much so to be a coincidence.

except clark had pointed him out as simon, not nathan. ]

[He has no idea that he's already been pointed out to her, and that his fake name has already been rumbled as a fake name.]

Same as everyone else, as far as I can tell.

[He turns back to look at the dancing, somehow unwilling to keep his eyes off it for long.]

They seem determined to have a good time.

[ lois can't help but wonder why he's giving out different names, if the one he told clark is real, if the one he gave her is. she figures that the answer is really 'neither'. it fits the tension she's spotted, that's still there in the set of his shoulders even as he looks back at the dancing. ]

I've heard that kind of dance is fun, [ there's the briefest pause, before she adds, as though she hadn't just called him mr richardson moments earlier: ] Simon.

[His eyes on her are immediately intense with the sort of wariness that could easily turn into fight or flight, his every muscle subtly tightening even though his posture carefully never changes.

Simon means she knows Clark, or Clark has told her about him. Enough to describe him. But what else? He thought he could trust Clark, or was starting to, was that a mistake? Has he been telling people his secrets?]

Who the hell are you?

[Lois Lane isn't good enough any more.]

[ the reaction is immediate, and while it doesn't tell lois anything she hadn't already guessed at, it confirms one thing without a doubt: this man is dangerous. ]

I'm a reporter, and a friend of Clark Kent's. [ she tips her head to the side, posture still relaxed and hands open by her side even though she thinks that he could do some damage if he decided to try, because she thinks he could do some damage.

(later, she'll wonder if 'friend' is really the most accurate word for what she is to clark. for now, it's good enough.) ]

I could ask you the same question. [ she smiles, tone light, though it does little to hide the steel underneath. ]

[A flash of something like betrayal spasms across his face, before his expression locks down into careful neutrality. He was wrong to trust Clark, it seems, he's been telling people about Bucky.

At least he knows not to go back to the makeshift camp he'd been shown.]

I'm nobody.

[He backs off a step, considering just running.]

[ lois considers for a moment. ]

You're someone Clark trusts enough to know what he is. [ she's not entirely sure why it seems important to refute his claim that he's nobody, but lois has learned to go with her instincts in moments like this. ]

[His expression manages to remain neutral, though there's a deep undercurrent of surprise underneath. Clark had been so cagey about it, but then... apparently Clark isn't all he seems.]

I don't know what you're talking about.

[Regardless of what might happen from here, he promised not to tell anyone and he'll hold to that. At least for now.]

[ that response gets a genuine smile from lois. clark asked her to keep his secret, too, and she has—but he's pointed out simon to her as someone who knows it, so there's no need now to keep it. ]

So you're loyal, too. [ it's a compliment as much as an observation. ]

He saved my life once. I tracked him down after that because I wanted to tell his story. He asked me not to. I'm a journalist.

[Having been pointed out to a journalist is really not something he's happy with, how does he know that he can trust her to keep quiet? How does he know what Clark has already told her? He could ask, but she could easily lie.]

I told you that I don't know what you're talking about, you have me confused with someone else.

[It's rough and edged with a slight warning.]

[ the slight warning isn't slight enough for lois to overhear it or interpret differently. it leaves her with the choice whether to press on or to back off and while she's inclined to press on by virtue of habit and out of principle alone, she's pressing on more than one front. even lois lane has limits; she knows that.

so she takes the middle way: ] Do you prefer Simon or Nathan?

[He doesn't have a preference, but there's no point insisting on Nathan when she's obviously heard otherwise from Clark. God, he's so angry at Clark right now, oddly betrayed.]

It doesn't matter, you won't see me again to need a name.

If I won't see you again anyway, are you willing to tell me why you feel the need to give out fake names?

[ he's not what she'd expected from anyone who knows about clark's secret, but then, clark had mentioned that people had found out. it takes a particular kind of dedication to find out, lois supposes. she has it. paranoia might be a good motivator, too, and that is something her current conversation partner seems to have in spades. ]

No.

[He's not willing to give her anything, and it shows in the hostile lines of his entire body.]

Tell Kal-El to stay away from me.

Are you blaming him for telling me that you know something about him?

[ lois is frowning now. ]

[He just shrugs, all tight shoulders and glaring expression, before he turns and starts to try and stalk away.

He's done with this.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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