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!

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm way smarter than I look. I'm the best at maths!

[ He is actually smarter than he looks, though he rarely needs to apply himself. ]

[Stop reminding him of Angus!! This is rude and he's gonna get sad!!]

Must be damn smart then, 'cause you look like a nerd.

[He's just teasing.]

That's not my fault. Have you seen the way my dad dresses?

I have and it's a tragedy.

[Not counting the Superman suit, that's rad as hell.]

Don't worry, I will absolutely take you shopping if you wanna buy some cool shit.

[ Hmm. To trust an adult's fashion sense or not. ]

Cool how?

However you want, bubbale, I'm not gonna stifle your expression.

["Cool" is subjective, anyway. The problem with the way Clark dresses is that he's hiding something with it; cool is about loving what you're wearing and feeling confident in it.]

[ Jon dresses to look like one of the crowd. A hat for sports he's not invested in, glasses to complete the illusion. Whatever is needed to fit in. ]

I don't know how much expression clothes are supposed to have.

Uh... all of it? I mean, listen, you don't get to choose your face and shit, right, but everyone judges you on it anyway. You can totally pick your clothes, though, and make people look at that instead.

[This is Important to someone who grew up with nothing and carved a life for himself out of fame. Looks and how he presented himself was vital to succeeding.]

I could.

But . . . I probably shouldn't.

[ It's too dangerous. Rife with possibilities Jon doesn't want to confront. ]

Why not?

[It's a genuine question; he understands that Clark is hiding a lot, but he doesn't see why there can't be a compromise.

Jon can still be a kid and wear silly kid clothes without giving away that he's an alien.]

It's . . . complicated. It's safer for me and it's safer for everyone else so.

[ Jon shrugs, aiming for nonchalant. He doesn't quite succeed because . . . he's ten. ]

You're ten, pumpkin, no one's gonna look at you different if you're wearing a boring old plaid shirt than if you're wearing a dinosaur costume.

[He's not... entirely wrong.]

I'm not just ten and I'm not just a kid. People can't know that.

[ Not that Jon has a clue who or what he's supposed to be. The Superboy identity are clothes he chose to wear, but it doesn't mean much to anyone.

Except maybe Damian. Which hurts to admit. ]

You sure look like that to me.

[He isn't trying to be condescending, he's just saying that on the surface, Jon looks exactly like both those things.]

It's really that big of a deal though, isn't it? What you're hiding?

[Clark told him it was a secret, that people would be afraid, but the fact that Jon's parents have instilled this paranoia in him says a lot more than Clark did with his words.]

[ He nods. ]

It always is. No matter where we go. Even different worlds.

[ Not that Jon missed the luxury of ignorance. He preferred knowing the truth. About his father, about himself, about his mom as well. ]

[For five years, Taako hid who he was, scared that someone would recognize him and hold him accountable for Glamorsprings, but that's not the same as this. This is hiding who Jon is.

It's a lot to put on a kid.]

You wanna know a secret, Jon?

Maybe . . . ? If you want to.

[ Jon doesn't need to hear Taako's secrets. Taako's been nice enough as it is and Jon's told him more than . . . anyone he's ever known. ]

Everyone's hiding something.

[With that, Taako drops the spell that he's been keeping up since the day he arrived in Riverview, and his face... changes, just slightly. He figures the extent of it will be lost on a kid, but Taako goes from very pretty, to just plain; his cheekbones aren't as sharp, his eyes aren't as bright, there's not as much color in his cheeks. It's almost like a before and after make up shot, but in reverse.]

I'm not saying you don't gotta be careful, but most of the time, everyone's too busy hiding their own shit to start poking into someone else's.

[ With Jon's eyesight, it's easy to spot the differences though the meaning behind it is lost on him. He doesn't quite get it, though he gets hiding. That everyone does it to some degree. That his family isn't all that different from anyone else. Tentatively he reaches out to touch Taako's cheek. ]

But it hurts.

[ And that was the key part of Jon's dilemma. It's meant to protect him and his family. But it hurts too. ]

[The gesture surprises him, but he offers a smile anyway and doesn't pull away. He's still just... a person, beneath the spells, but he hates that what he looks like isn't right anymore, it's not just about the vanity, it's genuinely unsettling to look in the mirror and see someone different. He's hiding it from himself just as much as he's hiding it from anyone else.]

I know, bubbale.

[There's not much else he can offer except understanding.]

It probably won't mean a whole lot right now, but one day it'll be your choice to make if you wanna hide it, not anyway else's.

[ Jon nods quietly. His father had essentially told him the same thing. Jon was too young and every decision his parents completely hinged on his well being. He wasn't dumb to think all the promises, the secrecy and the lies were any easier on them. ]

Yeah . . . Someday.

[This is probably where a person who's good at interaction would offer Jon a hug, but that's a little Too Much for Taako, so he settles for a gentle hair ruffle.]

And hey, this place is pretty different. Maybe Clark'll loosen up a little. I mean he told me, of all people.

[It isn't that Taako won't keep the secret, but like. He's still kind of surprised that Clark considers him a friend.]

[ Yeah that part really surprised Jon. Taako even knew his dad's other name and Jon didn't know anyone else who was aware of that. Clark didn't talk about Krypton very often, even though they've both spent time in the Fortress of Solitude. ]

How come? Not that you're not great and all . . . but . . .

I'm pretty sure he needed an excuse for being bad at how humans work.

[That's under-selling it a little, but really Taako isn't entirely sure. He gets that the get up Clark was wearing is important, but Taako would have easily accepted it as just "this is a cool outfit", the whole alien explanation wasn't necessary.]

Maybe you'd better ask him that one, but you know, your secret's safe with me and whatever.

[Really nailing it here.]

At least you're better than Batman.

[ Not that Jon particularly dislikes Batman. He's nice enough . . . sometimes. ]

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