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!

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Comments

[ragnarsson]

Ivar watches, waiting to see if there will be any physical changes. Really, she looks almost exactly the same, minus the slight rise and fall of her chest that's missing. Her skin eventually goes cold like that of a dead person when he brushes her cheek with a finger. Well, she did say that she would be dead as far as all intent went.

He waits for her to come back to her body, settling down into a waiting pattern. He's used to needing patience before battles, making sure weapons were sharpened, armor was clean, and the other five hundred small tasks that went towards moving an army towards victory. He watches over Letha as he said he would, thankful that most of her roommates were out. Watching over her while she appears to be sleeping would bring up some awkward questions he's not sure he wants to answer.

He notices when her chest suddenly has breath in it once more. Ivar sits up as she blinks her eyes. "Well? How did it go?" He's not sure what level of expectations he should have. What does he know about visiting the afterlife?

[burntbridges]

There's some obvious disappointment in her face, but... after delaying the trip for so long she's happy to visit an afterlife at all. Even if she now has to explain to anyone she's gotten up the hopes of that she's essentially failed them.

She sits up slowly, her shoulders slumped. "I can't contact anyone who didn't die in this reality." That much was obvious; she couldn't find Ragnar, or her family, or Kravitz. Only dead perimeter guards and lost loved ones of the locals. In the back of her mind she'd been hoping she could cheat the system and dreamwalk with her brother, but. Of course not. "I'm sorry. I won't be able to speak to your father for you."

[ragnarsson]

There was a little bit of disappointment in Ivar, but really, he hadn't been hoping for what was essentially a miracle here. She'd done her best. Her hair, usually so prim and proper, was tousled from laying on the pillow. He reached over and tucked a bit of it behind her ear. "Thank you for trying."

He lays back down, staring up at the ceiling. "Do you mind if I sleep here tonight?" He was too tired to consider dragging himself all the way back to his own floor. He also didn't even fully consider, in his sleepy state, the implications of actually sleeping with her beside him this time instead of just watching over Letha.

[burntbridges]

She hesitates a brief moment, wondering herself about the implications, before she just shifts closer to him and lays an arm delicately across his chest. "Well... I don't know how likely he is to find out, but I get the sense that Loki will be disappointed if you don't stay the night."

She wonders vaguely if that's enough to count as admitting she was gossiping, but she's too sleepy to worry about the implications. And too relaxed, finally getting to lay in the strong arms of a living man again. She's basically halfway to sleeping again as she mumbles it.

[ragnarsson]

"Mustn't disappoint a god. They're likely to retaliate if you do," he murmurs, intending to close his eyes. Then she's touching him again. That's enough to make his brain short circuit and think of nothing else but the slim, white arm lying across his chest. The bed was wide enough that he could have pulled away to the other side if he really wanted to but...he doesn't want to. Ivar hasn't had much luck with women in his short life. Just being able to lay down with a beautiful woman beside him is more than he could have hoped for.

"Good night, Letha." He gathers up his courage, reaches over, and runs one of his rough hands gently over her cheek.