riverviewlogs | monthly mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

Entry tags:

monthly mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That’s the thing about pizza. You can always get different toppings, and it’s like an entirely new meal.

[ listen he spent almost 30 years in a pizza desert and he plans on making up for lost time.

RIP Peter Quill. Cause of death: maintaining the diet of an 8-year-old at a birthday party. ]

[ She squints at him for a few long seconds...

And then sighs. ]

Fine. But do not cry to me when you're running it off tomorrow.

[ S u f f e r i n g. ]

[ His expression pinches. ]

Alternatively, we could, you know. Not do the laps thing.

[ Peter’s self-imposed fitness regime is decent enough, but ever since he agreed to let Gamora train him, it’s been—

Painful? Painful. That’s the appropriate descriptor.

Necessary, of course, with everything on the line, but still. ]

Well, if you don’t want pizza, what do you want?

[ ... Apparently, she wasn't fully prepared for this question, other than "not pizza."

She pauses to think. ]

Rice bowls?

[ That's healthier, at least. And Peter can smother his in whatever sauces his heart desires. ]

[ He seems to think this over for a second or two, before apparently conceding. ]

Fine. We can do rice bowls. [ Almost grudgingly, but relationships are about compromise, or so he heard somewhere at some point. And sometimes, you just can’t have pizza, which is a small tragedy, but there is something to be said about having too much of a good thing, he guesses.

And the place they usually go to is reasonably close by, and Peter turns down street towards it.

Also, eventually, maybe one of them should learn to, like. Cook. ]

[ Cooking? Who does that?

Drax. Drax can do that. Drax isn't here, but maybe after so long of takeout, they should at least learn basics.

But she is actually thinking about it now, a thoughtful wrinkle making it to her brow. ]

We should eat at home more often, shouldn't we.

[ It's more statement than question, but it's still some form of suggestion – in Gamora's own weird way. ]

[ And Peter’s response is immediate, blurted out without a thought: ]

Yeah, probably, but I’m reasonably sure I would burn water, and that’s not even mentioning the possibility of food poisoning. Plus, I hate doing the dishes as it is, so, I mean, if we add cooking on top of that, we’ll never have a clean plate again—

[ He cuts himself off, almost like he’s shaking himself out of a daze. Then, ]

... Uh.

[ Aaaaaand Gamora stops mid-step.

She stares at Peter for a moment in the wake of his babbling, startled by the fact that he even said that much about his avoidance of dishes. ]

... What?

[ Which is probably in place of an "are you okay?" ]

[ That’s two of them stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. ]

I don’t know.

[ And he sounds just as confused as he looks. ]

I only meant to say “probably,” but then the rest of that crap came out. But, you know, I’m really not wrong. Like, good luck getting me to wash up pots and pans when I’m barely doing cups and forks. And to be perfectly frank, most of the time I’m hoping that if I put it off long enough, you’ll get tired of looking at the piles of junk and take care of it yourself—

[ His teeth clack together as he forces himself to shut his mouth, and he slaps a hand over his lips. His look of confusion is quickly turning into one of alarm.

Muffled behind his palm, ]

What the hell?

[ If Peter didn't look so unnerved, Gamora absolutely would have had "AHA!" at the ready because she absolutely knew that's what he was doing, but also—

Why wouldn't he be able to control saying that? ]

Did you eat anything strange?

[ Because knowing the Quarantine... ]

Or accept something odd from anyone?

[ Her immediate reaction is to try and pin down a source, much like they had with the red string months ago. ]

[ He pauses, taking a breath as he slowly moves his hand away from his mouth. ]

Just the stuff I told you about earlier. The pastries and cookies and junk food? But I didn’t start oversharing until, like, now.

[ Even when he was ranting about the trials and tribulations of parenthood at the refugee, he had held back a lot – like how he takes Groot out with him beyond the wall, despite the stern lectures from his coworkers and supervisors. Groot can handle himself, and it’s actually fun for the kid. And more besides, it saves some poor, hapless babysitter from dealing with Groot all day.

And speaking of, the sapling in question tries to pipe up with a quick, “I am—” before Peter continues on. ]

And no one was doing that coy, mysterious crap, you know? Where they’re all, “Use this and find the love of your life!” or, “This candle has very calming properties,” or crap like that. It was just, “Here’s some impossibly sweet, sugary crap. Five bucks, please.”

[ Gamora doesn't look reassured – if anything, that seems more concerning.

She crosses her arms over her chest as she scrutinizes Peter, like staring at him will reveal the cause. ]

If it wasn't something you ate, maybe something is in the air. Do you feel anything else?

Anxiety. Panic. A weird, creeping fear that you're going to take advantage of this crap and ask me some seriously below-the-belt questions while I'm word-vomiting—

[ And he cuts himself off with a frustrated sound, clamping a free hand over his mouth. He uses the bouquet to point at Gamora accusingly.

Muffled behind his palm, ]

Would you stop?

Stop what?

[ If she wasn't actually worried about what's going on, this might be funny. ]

I'm trying to figure out what's happening to you. Am I supposed to do that without asking questions?

[ Maybe! is what he wants to say, thanks to denial.

What comes out instead is, ]

Obviously not, but it's making me seriously uncomfortable that every time you ask me something, I end up spitting out some weird answer like my life depends on it.

[ He grunts out a frustrated sound. Peter maybe be in the habit of oversharing, sometimes, but right now, with words bubbling up out of him without his input, he's especially worried about letting slip something deeply personal or weird or, worst of all, embarrassing. ]

Do not take advantage of this.

[ She gives him a flat look. ]

I'm not Rocket.

[ Who would absolutely get a kick out of this.

Gamora, however, has at least some respect for Peter's privacy.

... Unless it's legitimately important. ]

We could have you checked by the medical unit and go from there.

No.

[ And he blurts this out the second she finishes saying "medical." ]

I'm fine. It's fine. I'm just— talking too much. More than usual, anyway. I feel okay, aside from the panic, obviously.

[ He gestures with the flowers again, which is when Groot tries to say, "I am," in the same way someone else would say, "But guys—" ]

No hospitals. No doctors.

[ Gamora is too focused on Peter to acknowledge Groot's attempts to cut in, and she shakes her head at Peter shortly. ]

If something changes, we will have them look for any irregularities.

[ With a tone that leaves no room for arguing. ]

Then should we just wait for it to wear off?

[ He tries to say, "Yeah, fine, whatever."

What comes out instead is, ]

I am not going to a hospital unless I'm literally dying.

[ And he lets out another frustrated noise, balling a hand into a fist before he can cover his mouth again. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm down. ]

We wait it out. All the other junk around here eventually goes away, right?

Peter.

[ She doesn't sound truly patient, but she's... trying. Slightly. ]

Just because other things have disappeared doesn't guarantee everything does. If it changes for the worse, we're going down to medical.

If it gets worse.

[ In a way that implies he highly doubts it will.

And it's Groot's turn, apparently, to let out a frustrated sound, and he gets to his feet on Gamora's shoulder with an aggravated expression pinching his face. He knows better than to mess with Gamora, though, and while it might be easier to get her attention, Groot opts instead to extend out an arm.

And yank on Peter's ear. ]

Ow, what the hell—

[ And the kid lets barks out, I am Groot! and points sharply at the bouquet in Peter's hands.

Peter, in the meanwhile, is rubbing at his abused ear. ]

What about the stupid flowers?

[ ... This is another moment that might be entertaining if she wasn't pouring over potential causes for Peter's sudden honesty.

But Groot draws attention to the flowers, and Gamora looks back down to the bouquet. ]

The flowers...?

[ A moment of thought, and— ]

They are responsible for this.

[ Groot sighs, like it was obvious the entire time, but he confirms it with a tiny, "I am Groot!"

She frowns at the blooms, disapproving. ]

Then we should get rid of them.

[ Welp, the second Gamora affirms Groot's claims, Peter is immediately holding them as far away from himself as possible, like they might actually be diseased. The only reason why he doesn't is that Groot shakes his head.

"I am Groot." It won't help. ]

So now what?

[ And the kid shrugs, settling down to sit on Gamora's shoulder again.

"I am Groot." Just wait, I guess. ]

Oh, that's real helpful. You couldn't have warned us before this happened?

[ "I am Groot." ]

You forgot? How do you just forget—?!

Peter.

[ She cuts him off sharply with a disapproving look.

don't yell at the baby!!!!

She glances at Groot again, reaching up to pat the top of his head with a sigh. ]

We will wait it out.

[ She nods towards the bouquet. ]

Throw those out, and we can go back to the apartment.

[ this is not a baby this is a menace.

But Peter's outrage is silenced by that word of warning and that sharp look, and he glowers in return. At her direction, though, he casts around for the nearest trash can and spots it not too far away. He chucks the bouquet in, making the shot, but his current mood means he can't enjoy it. ]

So much for dinner, huh?

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