riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

Entry tags:

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!

navigation

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He is always, forever arrested by a shock of rich brown hair. It causes nothing so much as a stuttering of his gaze when it slips past her. Enough, it seems, to warrant her speaking to the matter of pastries.

James' smile is a small thing, just the faintest softening of the lines of his mouth, but nevertheless it's present. More than the physical similarities, it's the confidence of her conduct that draws him in. He has a weakness for women of stature.

Not quite enough of one that his reply isn't the faintest bit cheeky, though. His accent is Londonian, though it will doubtless sound antiquated (by roughly three hundred years) to her.]

I don't suppose you've tried a knife and fork?

Couldn't be bothered to find some.

[ she admits without too much of a care. while she is painfully English in both accent and the stiff upper lip, she is hardly the dame some would mistake her to be. She could be, certainly, could be as ladylike as one can be if the situation called for it.

But, oh hell. the day was lovely and the city was foreign and Peggy has been fretting for days and days now, might as well. ]

Then if you don't mind my saying, I think you may deserve the crumbs.

[He says it with good humour, gesturing slightly to the scattering on her collar.]

They don't offend your good-manners, I hope?

[ she brushes them away and at the very same time, stuffs the remaining half of the pastry into her mouth. the lipstick doesn't smudge and the overall effect is a bizarre oxymoron of neatness and carelessness. ]

[God fucking help him, but he laughs aloud. It's little more than a soft rumble of sound in the pit of his chest, kin to the sliver of a smile, and yet merriment persists.]

Miss, you presume much of my manners.

[Which is to say, he's nigh on impossible to offend. Once upon a time, perhaps, when the Navy had its claws in him there may have been some scandal to be had in the impropriety of it all, but now? He has seen too much of the world.

He gestures to a spot beside her on the grass. His other hand is rather occupied in holding a picnic basket.]

Do you mind if I join you? I may have some cutlery to share.

And you presume much of mine. It's Peggy. If we are to share cutlery, the very least you ought to know is my name.

[ which means no, she doesn't mind, not one bit, really. ]

if I am only invited to share the cutlery, I might as well have left that pastry alone.

[ is she inviting herself to his basket? goodness gracious. ]

[He takes a book out of the basket, a red leatherbound cover of Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, and sets that near at hand. The remainder is pushed obligingly towards her. The basket smells of fresh-baked chicken with an orange glaze, and a variety of baked vegetables all bound up carefully in containers. He does not eschew modernity such that he would fail to use tupperware. And true to his word, there are assorted pieces of cutlery at the bottom.]

James. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, [there's a part of him that yet balks at calling a lady by her first name, but she has proven in no time flat that she doesn't care one whit for convention, so,] Peggy.

James. In the mood for philosophy, are we?

[ She's eyeing the book, naturally and not without a certain measure of open interest. She'd go for the food in a minute or two. She seems content on this bit of conversation, for now. ]

[He reaches for the tension of being questioned about the book - this book - and finds none. It brought him peace, in the holding cell's of Nassau's tower. He has memorized every writ of it. The anger he held, when Miranda dared share the specificities of its pages with Richard Guthrie has abated, taken by dwindling tides to the depths of his soul's open ocean.

It is perhaps both the first and last thing that remains of a man he loved once, and of the woman who loved them both. One day it too will be dust, as they are now.

There is a moment laid bare, a hesitation, in which he neither moves nor speaks, and then he sets his hand atop the leather and curls his fingers against the spine. Lovers have been handled with less care than how he treats it as he hands it to her with deliberation. If she chances to look inside the cover, there is an inscription there, in a bold hand. Shame is a demon that has lived in him, it has supped on his humanity until there is little left in him worthy of the title.

But this is a place where such things can be excised. Where shame can be unlearned. James knows too well the process of rebirth. Why not bare his soul to a stranger? What is left of it lives in these pages.

With some amusement,]

I have a marked weakness for stoicism.

Thank you.

[ she says as it hands it over. it means a lot, the very way he holds it indicates as much and her gratitude is sincere and quiet. she has a few keepsakes of her own, she knows what it means to share them; and with a stranger, too. ]

A thinking man.

[ she passes a finger over the words; she doesn't ask. instead, she turns her head to look at him. ]

I've only read parts of it.

[He stills utterly as she traces the inscription. That she does not ask is perhaps the single most telling thing, it speaks to who she is in a way that decides his opinion of her almost instantly.

These days, he does not ever relax, not in any way that is meaningful, or matters. He saved that once upon a time for a manor in London, and then more grudgingly for a small house he built with his own two hands in the inlands of Nassau. But now he lets out a captured breath, and resolves to speak with this woman as one might a friend.]

There are copies in the library here. A different translation than the one to which I'm accustomed, so I can't speak to the exacting veracity of their words.

[He wishes he were a good enough man to give her full and unfettered access to his copy, but honestly it takes enough out of him just to allow someone that isn't Miranda or Thomas to even hold it. Perhaps if she did not match Miranda so neatly in countenance and bearing he'd not have offered even that.

There is an air of modernity about her that the women of his age are all but forbidden to express. Not for the first time, he wonders what Miranda Hamilton might have become if she had lived in a freer world. Gods, but she was a formidable woman. Instinct tells him the same is true of Peggy.]

I do recommend it, though. Should you find the time here.

It would seem,

[ she shifts, places the book in his hands. ]

That all we have is time, here.

[ she doesn't like the concept of it all, not one bit. there is work to be done at home and she resents the idea of someone deciding what she needs for her but at the same time she heard word of barnes and of steve and there is so much to find out, hidden truths she's not yet aware of.

perhaps she's grateful for that part, for the luxury of time. ]

Well, then.

[ she reaches for two forks and two boxes, offering him one with a little grin. ]

Can't have you thinking I lack manners entirely.

[ even if she's inviting herself to his lunch and handing him his own food. ]

[Not a soul fettered by idleness. Not one that cares for it. With what do modern women occupy their time? Miranda, who was born to wealth, who never sullied her hands in kitchen soot or took callus from a broom, learned to work a farm when presented with endless, impossible eternities. It is yet strange to him to consider that a woman may be anything she chooses well after his bones have been laid to rest. A soldier? A diplomat? A leader in the free world? Dizzying.

James takes the book back with rather less ceremony than he handed it to her, reverent but brusque, and it disappears back into the basket that has since been divested of its insides.

His mouth is quirked up at one corner at the way she seeks to portion out the food, but he accepts one of those two boxes without a dimming of that slight smile.]

Miss, you wound me. I would never.

[It's said with a rather droll species of sarcasm, as he peels back the plastic lid of the container. He's seated with one leg drawn up, the other stretched out, posture only quietly tense. His clothing - while all black - hardly reflects the era of his egress - that is to say, between the pierced ears, neat hair and the immaculate beard he could pass more easily for a twenty-first century hipster than an eighteenth century pirate.]

So what do you read, Peggy? If I may be so bold.

These days?

[ in all honesty, in-between the war and everything that came afterwards, she didn't have time for much of everything. However, she does indulge from time to time, when she's not picking up the pieces after Howard in what her dear Mr. Jarvis calls their adventures. ]

Agatha Christie, as it happens. I find her murder mysteries to be quite compelling.

[He spears a stick of something he has come to know as 'broccoli'. Though cultivated widely in Italy, it didn't make its way to England until well after James' time there, and he's found he quite enjoys it. Almost all his meals involve more fruit and vegetables than they do meat. After so long at sea, having them fresh is a novelty that bears frequent revisiting.]

The only lady author I've ever heard of is Aphra Behn. Is it a common profession for women, in your time?

[He says this entirely without scorn, or distaste. He is nothing if not an open-minded man, one who can and has embraced changes that seem radical to his contemporaries.]

[ from her own end, Peggy can appreciate the variety as well. The rationing during the war was unfortunate, at times. She was used to counting everything from teabags to slices of bread, not to mention luxuries such as sweets or warm food.

This is far easier and well-appreciated. ]

My time? I do reckon you're the first man I've met so far who referred to me as advanced or modern.

[He doesn't know which era, specifically, she's from, but it goes without saying that she is from a time well past his own. If he wasn't so certain she was from London, he might not be willing to make that assumption. That she might be from another world, an 'alternate reality', such as the term. But London lives in the bones of any who've been there, long after they've taken leave of England's shores. Like calls to like. He does not think he could be wrong about this, though he was raised in Padstow.

She is not a woman that could have been produced by the London he knew. Which leaves only the future.]

I'm afraid, for my part, that I'm a man out of time. 1717, specifically. I've met no one else from as far in relative antiquity.

[He says it with the faintest trace of self-deprecatory amusement. He does not rue being such. He feels no especial discomfort at the aloneness of it all, and has adapted - by necessity - quite well.]

1717? Good God, man, I must be utterly alien to you.

[ the woman who calls him by his first names and goes through his things. yet, it says a lot about him that he simply accepted her as she is. a man out of time, indeed or perhaps a man ahead of his times? ]

And I was thinking I am considered well-behind the rest of the folks around here. 1946; and as for your question, there are female authors. Still a minority, I fear but some of them are quite well-known.

Not so alien as one might imagine. I know a great many formidable women, though few that are quite so -- [a quirk of his mouth] shameless about it in the company of a stranger.

[Eleanor could have ruled the fucking world if not for all that stood in her way. Even then, she did her best to batter down each obstacle. He does not trust Woodes Rogers, but her... would that he had ever had a daughter, he could have wanted for nothing more than for her to be someone like Eleanor Guthrie. Unashamedly strong, unabashedly proud, indefatigable and uncompromising. It is a dearly held hope that he has not signed her death warrant, in surrendering.

He has found nothing of her in history. Little else here has stirred him to anger, but that stoked it like a forge fire.

As to Peggy's era, he knows a little. Of course, he has delved into the deep annals of Earth history. As much as one can, in the time he has had. He knows she is just past the cusp of something known as a world war.]

I will have to engage you on the matter of your favourites. An acquaintance has recently introduced me to Oscar Wilde, whom I have enjoyed.

Shameless, am I?

[ but then, she's considered that by the many men of her era as well. the woman who sticks her nose where it doesn't belong and seeks to be included in field operations as an equal instead of settling for fetching coffee and lunches. ]

A Picture of Dorian Grey. His writing is quite exquisite. I would recommend William Wordsworth if you favour poetry and Virginia Woolf - she passed only a few years ago, she was a remarkable woman.

[With some amusement,]

I think you're already well aware.

[Of being so. It's not meant as an insult, in any case. It's refreshing. Grounding. There is nothing in her company that puts him in the mind of grey shores, wet clothes and bullet holes.

Miranda, he's certain, would have adored her.]

I'll look into them, then. Have you read Cervantes at all? One of my dearest friends - of which you very much remind me - enjoyed Don Quixote to distraction.

[He lost count of how many times she read it. It was never solace to her the way Meditations was to them both, but some purveyor of joy. The book's purpose was to document the downfall of chivalry. Perhaps there was some lesson there.]

At school, yes.

[ not for a long while. still, these days peggy carter enjoys trashy detective novels but she's not without finer educations. ]

A bit of a sad tale, isn't it?

Mm. The best ones always are. What better way to relate to the human condition than by appealing to our sense of tragedy?

[He says it mildly, with a sort of philosophical bent. The truth is, he's seen enough of the world to know that humans take no especial joy in happiness. They will rail against misery as if it is the very axis of evil in the world, and yet they are so rarely contented when they have it. They have an insatiable need to always reach for more.

Once upon a time, perhaps he would have been the same. Now, he is interested only in a place to rest his weary bones.]

Perhaps in telling us of courage and companionship at the same time.

[ she says that against her better judgement. but in truth, peggy carter has been inspired by those two things in a time of great tragedy. the war has brought ruin and loss to everyone but there were the commandos, there was howard.

above all, there was steve. ]

I find these things go often hand-in-hand.

[Those that are good, those that are courageous, honest, decent souls, their lives almost unilaterally end in tragedy. Either that, or in obscurity. There are times that try men's souls, and to be brave is all too often to examine the worst of yourself and be willing to share that with the world.

His fingers twitch slightly, he makes an abortive gesture to smooth down his beard.]

What is your profession, Peggy? If I may be so bold.

(no subject)

mannerism - 2017-05-13 09:42 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

diagenesis - 2017-05-14 17:53 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

blossom picnic;

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)