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'll be sure to inform the others, then.

[ Lí herself will he moving to find a visible place in the kitchen to place the plate of cookies, but not without snagging one for herself first. If it seems like she's not too concerned about whether she keeps Ellie in her sight or not, it's because she isn't. Anyone can be dangerous, but she hasn't picked up on any hostile intent and a plate of cookies speaks in a very different direction. She'll be turning on her heel to head back, though, intent upon inviting the other to take a seat and chat a while. ]

Well met, Ellie. That's a lovely name. I'm Líadan Ní Donnabháin. [ And she is flashing back to her introductions with Lola for a moment. ] You can call Lí if you'd like!

[ After which that cookie is going into her mouth and -- yep, she is smiling. That's a good cookie. ]

[Leeadan nee whatnow? Ellie just scrunches up her face in confusion as she tries to sort out all those weird syllables in her head.

You don't tend to hear much in the way of foreign accents, when the community you grew up in is more or less static. No one travels overseas anymore, and anyone who grew up in another place and moved to Boston was either dead by the time she was paying attention to that sort of thing, or had lost much of their original brogue.

Lee it'll have to be.]

Uh. Sure. That's a pretty name. Kinda long. Are you from Earth?

[This is how normal people make conversation, right?]

[ This is totally how normal people make conversation. Lí herself doesn't think twice about it, which probably says something about her. ]

Why, thank you! I... can't say I've heard of an 'Earth,' though.

[ It's not hard to say, at least. Is Earth the name of Ellie's planet? She's guessing it's her planet. If everyone's from a different place, it wouldn't make sense to state the name of a smaller locality before you're sure the other person is familiar, right? ]

I hail from Erde. Is Earth the name of your planet?

[ Just to be sure. This is not a conversation she's ever had to have before, sooo... ]

[It's a sign of the times that she doesn't really blink at that.]

Yep. Third rock from the sun, seventy percent water, one moon? Used to have dinos wandering around like however many million years ago?

[All she knows about how the world used to be is from books. It's not like there's any contact with countries outside America. Canada, sometimes. Mexico. But the rest of the world may not even exist as far as she's concerned.]

I am certain I am unfamiliar. What are dinos?

[ A nomadic people? An animal? She honestly doesn't know, but she is curious. It must be of some significance since Ellie mentioned them when describing Earth. ]

[Holy shit does she have the opportunity to describe dinosaurs to someone. Ellie just grins so broadly and slings her backpack down from one shoulder.]

Well...

[Give her a sec to pull some images up on her tablet, and then she gestures Lí closer.]

They're basically these gigantic lizards that used to roam the earth like, I don't know, fuck-whatever billion years ago. See how big they are compared to humans?

[She flicks through a few images, from tyrannosaurus rexes to raptors, the things with long necks that remind her of giraffes. She gives animated (but probably completely inaccurate) summations of each of them in turn, too.]

[ Now that sort of excitement? It's quite contagious and Líadan doesn't need any additional gestures to claim a spot beside Ellie and peer at the construct's screen curiously. Her mouth may or may not drop open for a second there because while the reptiles of the Isle are quite wondrous, they are nowhere near the size of some of these illustrations. ]

They are big and... different, too! Look at the teeth on that one! Your ancestors had to contend with these creatures?

[She laughs.]

Nah. They were all killed millions of years ago. I'm pretty sure humans would've died out if they had to fight these fuckers on the food chain.

[Sorry, Lí, she has the mouth of a sailor and doesn't really even recognize she's doing it.]

Pretty cool though, right?

[ If only Líadan quite realized that bit about the language. As is, she's dangerously close to assuming that dinosaurs and fuckers are synonymous or that 'fuckers' is a term you might use for whoever is at the top of the food chain. ]

I am not certain there would have been much competition. Then again, size does not necessarily denote intelligence.

[ And she cants her head just so. ]

Cool? I assume you don't mean cold. Something like wondrous maybe?

[She shrugs a bit, and ultimately decides that she is going to steal one of those cookies for herself. Is it even stealing if she made them? Who knows.]

I don't know, smarts only do so much.

[Maybe she has a jaded view of that. She knows a lot of smart dead people. The only difference between them and her and Joel is luck.]

Oh, uh-- it's a slang thing. [She's gotten used to describing this sort of thing to Ivar.] Pretty close to wondrous, yeah. Maybe with a bit more oomph.

[ Lí doesn't count it as stealing. In fact, she's glad Ellie took one. It makes her feel a little less guilty for snagging another for herself. ]

What attributes do you think best to have for survival?

[ There's no criticism, only curiosity about that question. She nods at the explanation given. ]

I will bear that in mind, then. It would be good to have a more solid sense of the linguistic curiosities I keep running into here.

[That's a question that sort of slugs her in the gut. Not on purpose, but-- it's a lot to think about. A lot of things she hasn't really had to think about, this last month.

She chews on the cookie thoughtfully, and huffs out a breath.]

Uh... I guess just. Being able to move forward. Endure and survive, no matter what.

[It's what keeps her going, and she's gotten all the way here. Means she's doing something right, at least.]

And don't worry about the slang. You'll figure it out! And you can always ask me, too.

I don't think you're wrong, Ellie.

[ And her smile is as earnest as the words that accompany them. To be able to move forward, endure, survive -- that's the base stuff for living and you can't do anything if you aren't alive. ]

Your clan must be proud.

[ As for the slang, she nods several times as she considers that she might run into a great deal of it. ]

I will be sure to ask you should I come across any slang too difficult to figure. Perhaps I'll make a game out of it. That wouldn't be odd, would it?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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