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

[hellshot]

..... Excuse me?

[He turns his head, fixing the girl with one hell of a confused look. Did she just offer to cook him--a complete and utter stranger, who hides his face and mouths off to innocent vendors--a meal? One that she'll not only put together but hunt down herself? He's immediately confused, if not entirely baffled.]

You go around offering to hunt down dinner for every man in black you meet, or am I just some sort of exception. [Because really, he's completely feels like he's being put on here or something. She'd approached him in such a friendly manner and now... this?]

--and of course it's overpriced, if you bought the ingredients for most of the crap here yourself, you could make dozens of the things for the same price as buying one or two of the damn things. Making your own food is always cheaper--you pay the price of convenience and novelty.

[leadintheyoung]

[ And she'll be turning her head from the cone to look at meet his gaze. ]

Should the color bother me? The night sky would be pitch if not for the moons and stars. Your mask may startle the young ones and the weaker hearts, but I won't have it said that I'd shy from any warrior's gaze.

[ And she's used to walking among warriors, many of whom do not always have the cleanest mouths or the best temperaments, nevermind that it's her nature to run toward danger and as opposed to away from it and usually with an excited grin plastered across her face. ]

It isn't a joke, nor is the offer made out of pity or anything of the sort. I am used to providing for a large number and I've yet to meet anyone who didn't warm with one of my meals.

[ There is a pause, though, and then, a mite less seriously: ] Maybe I should learn how to make these things while I'm at it.

[hellshot]

[Funny, her first answer brings something like The Brothers Grimm or Shakespeare to mind. The response is strangely poetic, and his head tilts lightly to the side, his arms still crossed over his chest. Either she truly is fearless--or she's delusional. At this point in time, Reaper really can't decide which it is.]

Oddly poetic. You come up with that just now, or do you write sonnets on your free time.

[He could be nicer about her offer, but--Gabriel is as Gabriel tends to be--a stick in the mud with a mostly-absent sense of gentility.]

You might find I'm a bit hard to warm. But if you're so determined to impress me, then you might as well do your worst. [Maybe she's lucky that she isn't the first one to force him to socialize. Otherwise he may have been far colder about her offer here.]

But I will warn you. I'm neither good company, and I haven't got table manners. This is your chance to back out and make some real friends. I could give you a few suggestions to better company. Starting with the tart woman over there.

Now's your chance to back out, girl.

[leadintheyoung]

[ Back out? Back out? That sees Líadan lower her ice cream cone slowly and with no small amount of gravity. If her eyes and ears had taken to wandering for her consideration about making treats before, they most assuredly are not now. She looks him dead in the eyes and it's funny how the din seems to fade out, replaced instead by something... quiet and slow, but not lifeless. There's a solemnity, a melancholy about the music that reaches her ears, something that contrasts the joyous, upbeat music that flows around them, and the drive, the dredge about it would see her move with it if not for her awareness, her resolve. There's something else there, too, just underneath the surface, something like... fire, like burning, a cracking maybe? She can't quite place what it is as loud as the music is around them, but her decision was made before her ears settled upon his notes. ]

'Back out' isn't in my vocabulary and I have an impressive vocabulary. If your table manners are the worst of you, I'd be disappointed. Some of the best friendships are the hardest won.

[ And with some of the most difficult people. She'll stand by that. That ice cream cone is going to be lifted back up, though, as she's not about to give it the chance to melt. ]

I guess you could call me a poet of a kind, though. Wordsmithy is steeped in strong magicks and I consider myself well versed.

[hellshot]

[It's an odd moment, being stared at with a gaze that seems to look straight through him, with a fire in her eyes that almost makes him feel itchy. Like he's being read--and he doesn't like it. She'd better be thankful he's such a collected guy, else he may have reached out to smack her if she'd continued the odd look before speaking.

He makes a face under his mask that she won't see, but she may see the way he cocks his head back with that almost shift of disbelief in his body language.]

'Friendship'? If that's what you're hoping from this, you're going to search in wilds unknown and find yourself wanting, if you want me to use your own impressive vocabulary against you.

[yeah he's read Shakespeare ok]

Magic isn't a construct that holds up in the place where I come from. As far as I'm concerned... 'magic' just just a fancy word for 'science' that isn't yet understood.

[Now he's just trying to play off that he agreed to let her cook him dinner.]

[leadintheyoung]

[ Oh, she reads that shift of disbelief and she takes it in stride as she continues to work on that ice cream cone. Of course, she'll pause for his poetry, brows rising. ]

Not bad! If the wilds were to best me, it would be a first. As for coming into the unknown, that sounds to me like a grand adventure.

[ The exciting sort that leaves you with tale after tale to tell at the fire and a certain glow about you. That word, though -- 'science' -- catches her ears and earns a tilt of the head. ]

'Science'? That sounds like the fancy word to me. Whatever name you call it by, what matters is the effect. I would think friends and enemies could agree with that.

[ And... he totally agreed to let her cook dinner is the realization that's dawned. There's no negative to be had anywhere in his statements and that? That is what Lí calls a victory. She might be just a little bit cheeky. Or, you know, a lot. There's definitely a smile for it. ]

[hellshot]

[God, now she's smiling. He rolls his eyes at her behind the hollows of his mask--not that she'd see it. His arms crossed as he assumes his usual pose of a human pretzel--all knotted and salty as he can be when he's been bested by someone who's at least half his age.

Yeah, gloat it up, girl. See how you enjoy his company when you treat him to dinner and he's a bad dinner guest.]

'Grand adventure'. Right... because that's what most people would call meeting on a planet far from their own. [A snort, and a wave of his hand, dismissing what she's saying, entirely.]

Science is easy. It's the detailed explanation of how shit in life works and why. Not just brushed off as something mysterious and fantastic like magic seems to be. Even if you're halfway right about the 'effect', I'm certain most magic has a good explanation, too.

[He's just too old and tired to figure most of it out.]

[leadintheyoung]

It doesn't fit the definition of 'boring' and 'routine'. If it does, I would be very interested in knowing just what sort of world you hail from.

[ And why her ice cream is nearly gone? She's actually reached the cone by this point and she pauses for a moment to look it over and figure out just how to attack the thing. ]

If you want to get into the how's and why's, I'd suggest visiting a college. Magick does indeed have a how and a why and I'm as aware as I need to be to use it, but I'm no scholar. Sitting on your rear with your nose stuffed in stale pages has never been very appealing to me.

[hellshot]

What sort of world? [What a loaded question that would be.] Something far more than even this place. Everything is dependent on machines. And machines are considered people, too.

I've fought with them and for them most of my life. [Vague.]

I'm not interested in visiting any colleges, nor am I interested in magic. I have what I need, and magic and 'stuffing my face' into a book won't give me an advantage that what skills I've already acquired haven't already.

[And being dead helps.]

[leadintheyoung]

Machines? I take it that's some sort of construct, but... a construct that is considered a person?

[ That's... sort of an odd proposal, but not quite, what with her people being quite animistic in terms of their beliefs. Her expression speaks perfectly as to her pondering. ]

And what sort of skills are those, if I may ask?

[hellshot]

A 'construct' is a good descriptor. They're entirely man-made. With a mind and a soul, etched on wiring and code. Language, electricity. [He's no expert in describing technology to someone from an older age.]

...

You're asking what I'm personally capable of? Or what this cursed body is capable of?

I'll answer one of those, as you'll find both are very different.

[Choose carefully, you only get one answer.]

[leadintheyoung]

Made of what?

[ That's as good a question as any. She doubts stone or wood is the answer. Probably metal of some kind? This place seems to favor constructs made out of the stuff. The concept of wiring and code isn't completely novel to her since she volunteered as a runner in the caves and her natural curiosity, of course, got the better of her. Still, it's easier for her to concentrate on the overall picture.

Those questions of her give her the tiniest bit of pause, though. ]

Cursed body?

[ It isn't meant to be submitted as her answer, but it takes her aback a moment to that burning, that crackling she can still discern. Does that... have anything to do with it? ]

[hellshot]

Metal and wire. Steel and plastic, carbon fiber and cloth. They're constructs, entirely made by a factory that is built to automate the process.

[Meaning: the factories that build omnics aren't even run by humans anymore. It's a frightening concept, if you really think about it.]

...Cursed. You heard me right.

I'm a dead man, and yet here I stand. Always burning, always dying, but never staying dead.