monthly mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

[riverviewmod]

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: monthly mingle: flower festival
when: The month of April.
where: Anywhere around the city.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

flower festival

In the days leading up to April 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: The Flower Festival. Celebrating springtime, beauty, joy, and togetherness, the festival heavily features floral themes and dancing. The advertising mentions that on April 9th, a paid holiday, there will be a Blossom Picnic, as well as lists of various public dances at clubs or other open venues, the River Spirit Procession, and Flower Exchange.

a celebration of spring

The Flower Festival's main event is the Blossom Picnic on April 9th, 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 9th. 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 and dances

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)!

As for the Flower Festival dances, they're pretty straightforward - 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.

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!

iii. flower exchange

During this year, there's been an influx of people from a dying reality consisting mostly of living plant people, and they've really taken the Flower Festival as a great opportunity to introduce one of their most honored traditions to the people of their new adopted world. The tradition involves sharing various types of flowers with strangers, with each type of flower having a different meaning and effect on both the giver and receiver - the bond of the exchange can spark emotion as well as physical responses that function in a unique way that affects almost everyone that participates, whether animal, plant, or even android.

Any characters exchanging the flowers with other characters, whether friends or strangers, will experience emotional/psychological effects, physical effects, or both once the exchange is complete. Effects can last for as short or long a time as the players involved want, and are as follows:

● Baby Blue Eyes - Trust/Healing the Inner Child
Emotional Effect: Either an inexplicable trust in the person the flower was exchanged with, or a generalized paranoia.
Physical Effect: De-aging. Characters can become a younger version of themselves, physically, mentally, or both. Whether or not their normal selves are of age, de-aged characters may not participate in adult prompts unless they're de-aged to something above 18.

● Chamomile - Peace & Harmony/Animal Support
Emotional Effect: A desire to make peace with one's enemies, or an inexplicable urge to push away loved ones.
Physical Effect: Both participants in the exchange will wake up the next morning with an animal companion that represents their soul/personality. Whether the companion can speak is up to player discretion.
NOTE: Animal companions from this event can be kept for a total of 300 Points. If you wish to keep them, just submit a request under your name on the Activity Bonus Rewards Page. For new players ONLY (players apping/reapping their first character in April) who wish to keep the animal companion but do not yet have points, feel free to submit and I will credit 300 points to be submitted once you have them.

● Rose - Friendship/Beauty
Emotional Effect: Openness and a desire to make new friends, or excessive competitiveness.
Physical Effect: A temporary glamor that makes both participants in the exchange appear as the most beautiful possible version of themselves, and improves their charisma.

● Crepe Myrtle: - Inspiration/Enduring Partnerships
Emotional Effect: New and creative ideas to solve life issues, or finding oneself averse to change.
Physical Effect: As soon as the exchange is complete, the two characters involved will be bound by an invisible tether that keeps them within three feet of each other. The tether won't affect anyone but the characters involved (no, you can't clothesline your enemies with it).

● Valerian: - Relaxation/Heart-Opening
Emotional Effect: A near-complete erasure of anxiety and stress, or a dramatic inexplicable increase in it.
Physical Effect: Forced honesty. Both affected characters become incapable of lying. Whether they're compelled to blurt the truth or if they can keep their mouths shut or talk around the truth is up to player discretion.

[Flower meanings used in this prompt come from this site.]

iv. river spirit procession

The River Spirit Procession is a yearly tradition in the Quarantine where a (usually small) contingent of people walk along the edges of the river carrying candles and dressed as river spirits, and offer sweets and blossoms or petals by tossing them into the river. The offerings are intended to appease the river spirits and guarantee safety from flooding, storms, and to ensure a good growing season. With the flooding that's still affecting the river, the turn out this year is much greater than usual, with a large number of residents entering the processions that happen throughout the month, usually on weekends.

During the processions, residents dress as river spirits, which is a relatively broad description and can be taken in a wide variety of ways and leaves a lot up to interpretation. They enter the procession at the place where the river enters the walls and follow the banks of it carrying candles, and often whispering or quietly speaking their gratitude for the river's plenty and their wishes for the year to come. Many residents also bring baskets of young blossoms or petals from flowers, and small sweets such as candy or tiny pastries and throw them into the river to appease the spirits. They carry along the river for as long as they wish to.

ACTION PROMPT: This year, with the flooding, the monsters, and the heavy turnout, the river spirit procession is a little more dangerous an undertaking than usual. After the first procession on April 1st resulted in several residents being swept away in the rising flood waters, and several others being attacked by a loose crocodile, the trouble becomes painfully evident. The Perimeter Guard will be sending out extra detachments and calling in reserve members to help keep the processions safe, and any extra hands to protect those who choose to participate will be more than welcome.

v. roommates or wildcard

Feel free to use this prompt to meet new roommates, for the purpose of getting to know each other, or hit up the mod-posted prompt to create a Communal Housing floor mingle. Or, if you have an idea for a prompt that isn't in this list, set during the Flower Festival, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: unknown, found on pinterest; image ii: Steven Kent Lomtong; iii: Ryan Talbot; iv: Toru Nishimura

navigation

Comments

iii

[bythehand]

[ Carpe diem is definitely the mood of the moment, in this regard. Finn's only been here for about four months, give or take, and even he knows that it's possible to find a magical shenanigan in even the most unlikely of situations.

But on the other hand: they're nice flowers. And nice... plant people. He thinks. From what he's seen hanging around here with Cisco, anyway. ]

Maybe.

[ Which is to say, he's already starting to walk forward. Rey would love how some of these look. ]

Are you saying you only want to give me flowers on special occasions?

[franciscoramon]

[ Cisco moves forward, too, a little less wary than Finn, browsing through the baskets full of bundles of free flowers to be exchanged. Those friendly plant people are looking on, and it's a bit difficult to judge, but they seem excited, eager for people to participate. It might seem like a weird tradition to Cisco, but he's sure half the stuff he misses from Earth would to Finn and people like him, too. ]

Wow, I came out to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now...

[ No, he doesn't expect Finn to know the meme, but it makes him smile to say it, precisely because it is a little slice of home. But he shrugs, a little awkwardly: ]

I'm just saying, if this is a whole thing where they're from, might as well try it. Be festive and all.

[ He plucks up tiny bundle of small, bright buttery-yellow roses from one of the baskets, decisively, holding them out for Finn to take, asking as he does: ]

You got any of these on your end of the galaxy? They're called roses, they smell great. Try it.

[bythehand]

[ Sadly, Taako hasn't taught him about memes yet. Just emojis. If it makes Cisco smile to say it, then Finn's glad he's got it to say. He thinks.

Cisco's not a mean sense of humor type, so at the very least, it's nothing to worry about.

Finn accepts the flowers with the dubious air of someone waiting for a second shoe to drop out of nowhere, but he actually perks up a little when Cisco names them. ]

Okay, I know we have these. Haven't spent a lot of time around flowers, but-- I know we've got roses somewhere. [ Check that out, a whole thing in common between galaxies. He lifts them up to give them a quick sniff. Pulls a sort of "not bad" face. ] I've actually got a friend named Rose. Back home. Bet you'd like her.

[ Oh, right, this is supposed to be an exchange thing. Finn's not one to knock the rose theme, so he'll go on a quick hunt to make this technical transaction happen. ]

[franciscoramon]

[ For a moment there, Cisco thought that Finn might actually turn down the flowers - which he'd offered half as a joke, but still, he thinks he might have been a tiny bit hurt, if he had. Cisco grins all the wider when Finn smells the flowers, gives a little nod of assessment, as if they just about pass muster. There's something endearing about it (though he wouldn't tell Finn that in so many words). Cisco knows a bit more about him, now, and the circumstances that led to an unusual lack of time to stop and smell the roses in his life. Cisco's glad he's got a chance to do that, here and now - in this case literally. ]

Oh yeah? What's she like?

[ It's so rare, hearing Finn talking about anyone from back home, much less someone he calls a friend. Cisco can't help being curious. And it had sounded like Finn thought Cisco would enjoy her for some reason in particular... ]

The different colors are supposed to symbolize different stuff. Yellow's friendship, I'm pretty sure.

[bythehand]

Who picks what means what? [ He guesses there are worse colors for friendship than yellow. Technically. It's nice to know.

But hm. What is Rose like. What's the best way to describe her to someone who hasn't met her? Finn feels like if he just said "she's great" and left it at that, it wouldn't really... help at all.

Not as long as she's not here to make her own impressions, anyway. ]

Well, she's short. Pretty sure she ties her hair with electrical wire. [ Look. It's true and he should say it. Finn is going to pretend not to know he's bad at this and just gun it. ]

She's with the Resistance. Obviously. We ran an op together. I think she's a mechanic? Smart, great with tech. Stubborn. Kind of has a temper. Either brave or crazy. Or both. [ He shrugs, finally holding out a yellow rose to offer Cisco in return. "Brave or crazy or both" is basically his entire home world friend triangle. ] I've only known her for about a day. But she's-- good. You know, a good person. Likable.

[ They smashed up a fancy casino town and almost got executed together. It was wild. ]

[franciscoramon]

I... have got no clue, actually. I guess it's just traditional? Must've gotten standardized by somebody at some point, but I couldn't tell ya. Sometimes I really miss wikipedia.

[ Cisco smiles, a bit puzzled, when the first descriptor that Finn goes for, and emphasizes so much, is that she's short. Is that why Finn thought they'd get along? 'Cause Cisco's short, too. Is he implying something?

But then Finn adds a bit more detail, and Cisco nods along, taking that yellow rose with a smile of thanks. He wastes no time in bringing it up to his nose, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. Is it just him, or do they smell a little different from Earth roses. A little fainter, but a little sharper, less sweet. ]

Wow, you're right. I already like her and I haven't even met her.

[ There is a disappointing lack of just about anything happening, now that they've both given one another roses. Cisco hadn't been visibly transformed. He's feeling normal or thinks he is. ]

What kind of an op?

[bythehand]

[ Cisco passes the test that wasn't really strictly a test. The test of liking Rose already.

Finn really thinks they would like each other. Just sort of a feeling. He starts walking again, almost idly putting himself in front to lead the way. ]

We went to find a codebreaker so we could sneak onto the First Order's main ship. Try to shut something down and keep it from tracking the Resistance fleet. I knew the layout, she knew the tech. It sounded pretty cut and dry on paper.

[franciscoramon]

[ Cisco doesn't stop to consider the sudden feeling he has that maybe he'd like to be the one walking in front, thanks. He just speeds up his steps a little, casually. ]

Never turns out like it sounds on paper, though, does it? Just a question of how bad things go wrong.

[ He's had ideas that go just a little bit bad, that can be fixed with a little improvising and a little luck, and he's had ideas that go so badly wrong that people ended up dead. Once, the people were him. But Cisco can't think of a single time when something has gone exactly according to plan. ]

So what happened?

[ As he asks that, Cisco slows slightly, looking at a booth with a variety of little guessing games. There are cards with riddles and bits of trivia to be purchased for a few cents; jars full of coins and candies and little crystals where a correct guess (for the price of a few cents) would earn you the jar. Cisco turns to Finn, eyebrows raised, nods his head in the direction of the stall, a wordless 'you interested?' ]

[bythehand]

Had to settle for the wrong codebreaker. He sold us all out. Got some people killed. Almost got us executed. [ It was sort of the opposite of everything they were trying to do, really. From what he's heard from Rey and Poe, it seems like everyone ended up with the opposite of what they were aiming for back there. Finn might sound slightly bitter. Because he is.

If DJ's smug face turns up in this city somewhere, he's pretty sure he plans on trying to incorporate it into the nearest stretch of pavement. But hey, he can worry about that another time. Just kind of box it away to unpack as needed. ]

It was a long day.

[ And frankly he's keeping plenty of that packed away, too.

Cisco slows down just as Finn is starting to think about taking a particularly long step to pull ahead again. His interest is both clear and immediate. Enough to have him fishing his tap card out of a pocket to pay for a few rounds. There's no way people only go in for one, right? ]