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

[threatenwithcuteness]

And it tastes better. *Lola is bad at priorities, or really good at priorities, depending on how you llook at it.*

I mean I would never do it, or suggest it for anyone, but what you're doing works for you. I think. I could tell better if the lighting wasn't all flashy.

*Lola watches the exchange and mouths a silent apology to the poor worker being yelled at. She didn't ask this woman to yell at anyone for her, and she could have asked nicely.* And they already have you working parties minding people?

[realimperfect]

It doesn't help your organs process whatever it is you've been drinking. [ She's spent too much time around her doctor, truly. When she can lecture about health matters with relative accuracy is when that becomes so damn apparent, but it doesn't stop her from continuing with her lecturing. Daedalus would give her hell for all the alcohol she'd taken in on her last few days on Bajikan, too, to be fair. Not only about the calorie intake but the general unhealthy effects on her organs and whatever else he could think of to give her an earful about - ]

Let's put it this way - if I want to get back to doing detective work, instead of this beat cop cat herding exercise, I'll take what I can get jobs wise. The youngest ones here are only five years younger than me, anyway, so I suppose the thought was that it might lead to a little more listening. [ Or it was literally just wanting bodies to take space, but she's got a self importance complex bigger than a condominium and that's where that's going to stay. The water appears shortly, and the waiter actually gets a nod of thanks as it's passed over, hands finding her hips as she takes a sweep of the room, again. ]

Drink at least one of those for every alcoholic drink you have. Cuts down on the hangover. Just.. trust me on that.

[ Bajikan had taught her a lot of lessons, mainly to do with how hedonism hurt sometimes. ]

[threatenwithcuteness]

Well, I've only had a few ciders, they taste like pear but I don't think pears are a thing here.

*Lola smiles, not a drunk smile just her usual energy to her. But she does take and nurse the water. As she listens to all of this. The age thing is a pretty good explanation, someone a little too old won't draw eyes and cause kids to purposefully avoid them. So it would be the smart way to put narcs in the party.*

I'm sorry you have to go back to doing grunt work, if something else is what you'd rather do. And you don't have to worry, I know how to drink. I'm just not used to drinking and dancing, usually I only have a little wine or beer that's paired with my dinner.

[realimperfect]

No, probably not. [ She'd be surprised if those kinds of fruits were sort of... universal, but then again anything was possible in the world they were in now. Pears had been rare in her own world, along with other fruits, and weren't necessarily the easiest to grow in some sort of artificial set up. None of it really mattered all that much, anyway - not having a lot of sugary things available to her without some sort of reproach meant that her sweet tooth was not entirely fully formed.

Sweet drinks quickly became a little too much for her system, which usually meant she'd go straight to the liquor after a drink or two - ]

The club atmosphere will do that. [ Welcome to her first time in a bar with a couple of other people who were bad influences - and the slamming hangover the next day where she'd contemplated death as a solution. ]

Alien liquor is very strong, too. I don't necessarily know that's what's in there but.. it would make sense.

[threatenwithcuteness]

They have other things they shouldn't, like words, and names.

*Lola wasn't really sure how this worked, but she accepted it did work. That was what she could do, right?*

I'm not sure if they added anything, if it was it doesn't have any taste that's noticeable. I have a very strong, um... I have taste.

*She's too tired/drunk to remember the word palette.*

[realimperfect]

[ There's a moment where she blinks rapidly, trying to figure out what words and names she was referring to, exactly. She's not even quite sure this is at all related to their conversation, and after a moment decides to let it drop entirely.

She'd kept talking, after all : ]

Considering you seem to have a penchant for fruit juice, it's easy enough to cover liquor with a well mixed fruit drink. It's already sugary and sweet to cover the tang of the liquor.