riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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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

[She shakes her head, or does the best she can to approximate it while laying flat. Her legs tuck in a little bit, to give him some space.]

Nah. They gave me this when I came in. Still wish I had my old one, though. [The one she has now is bland and nondescript, no Donut Wolf wallpaper or her friends all lined up in messenger or the ever-comforting presence of Sharkle.

God does she miss Sharkle.]

Suck. I had my phone, I guess they consider that close enough that I don't get donations. [He taps the pocket of his long coat thoughtfully.] Course... it has a crapton of music on it. Not all of it this heavy, but...

[She gets the hint pretty much immediately and nods, lazily gesturing towards the tiny speaker that's been blaring grimy-ass bass goodness this whole time.]

Go nuts dude. Wanna see what you got cookin'.

[Morgan pulls his phone out with a far-too-fancy spin. It unlocks practically before he touches it, thanks to iris-scanning technology of THE FUTURE!, and he quickly dives into his stored music.]

[The song he brings up is a fusion of the dark instrumental depths of death and black metal with the clear and higher vocals of power metal, which makes for a curious sound that has a lot of bass but not a lot of growling at all. The phone screen identifies it as "Falcone" by 88 Sins, from their 2026 album "[Angry Trail of Blood]", if she's curious.]

[Oh hell effing yes this is absolutely her shit. The music actually manages to get her to move, just a little bit, nodding silently to the lyrics. She can just barely understand what they're talking about, but it sounds super deep and powerful. Mae's done a lot of really regrettable stuff since she got here, but letting this strange man into her room isn't one of them.

Eventually, she gets curious enough to check what this song is called, for future reference, and her eyes go wide.]

Ho. Lee. Shit. [She glances up at Morgan, awestruck and maybe a little scared.] Dude are you from the future?

[Oh wow. Been a long time since he heard that question, and it makes him -- giggle. Yes, a tall muscular dude with long hair and a generally badass look about him has a tendency to giggle occasionally. This probably ruins everything, doesn't it.]

Well. You know. Setting aside the fact that we definitely don't come from the same world, its 2027 on my Earth.

[The lesson here being that smartphones haven't changed too much in external appearance, even though the one sitting on the bed between them is as fully functional as most desktops of a more contemporary time.]

[The giggling isn't that much of a surprise, to be honest. Tough dudes are allowed to giggle. Still, it does manage to take the edge off of having this probable kung-fu badass in her room, so that's something.]

Dang. It was fall of 2017 when I left, so you gotta be like... [hold on let her do some quick mental math here.] Shit, ten years ahead of me.

[There's a long pause before she speaks up again, letting the music speak for itself. Goddamn she's gonna have to snag some mp3's off him later or something.]

Well. Glad to see things haven't totally gone to hell. Or maybe they have, but the phones are still cool.

[He was offering. 'Course he has a crapton of stuff that verges lighter on his phone, with a weird spike in stuff that peaked early-aughts thanks to his dad's collection, but she could weed out what she didn't want.]

Hey, some people would say any world that allowed me to reach adulthood is hell in and of itself. [Smirking, he sticks out a fist, figuring she's a bumper rather than a shaker.] Morgan Knight.

Dude, same. [She accepts the dap with as much style and grace as she can muster, which isn't a whole lot but still. Even wiggles her fingers a little when she pulls away.]

Mae Borowski. [A half-second pause before something else bubbles to the front of her brain] Is that really your name? That seems like the kinda name you only have if you're in a movie or if your parents are, like. Huge nerds.

[That gestures both amuses and enlightens Morgan, who is quietly trying to figure out just where Mae lies on the anthro-furry spectrum.]

That's totally my name. Thank Dad for the last name and Mom for wanting the Celtic callback. Though I am pretty sure my dad was a huge nerd, so there's that.

[She doesn't have a tail, for what it's worth, so probably a little further down than he might be thinking.]

I mean, there are worse names. One of my friends calls himself Germ Warfare, and I dunno if he does it intentionally and it just kinda stuck or if everyone calls him that as like. A goof. [There are a lot of things that don't make sense about Germ, and he seems pretty okay with that.]

[That doesn't help at all, he knows catpeople who have nothing more than claws and ears -- and tail. Good thing he's not honestly too worried about the question or it would hurt his brain.]

[He makes a face at the name.] Yow. Guess my first question there would be, 'how's his hygiene?'

[She lets out a little snort of laughter, smiling. Still feeling a little homesick, just thinking about her friends, but talking about it helps. Only a little, but it helps.]

Okay? I mean he hangs out in the drainage pipes sometimes, but it's not that big a deal. Like, I'm pretty sure he showers regularly. It's just a weird nickname that kinda caught on.

Oh, yes, we certainly shouldn't judge someone who hangs out in drainage pipes. But hey, why not? [Morgan flops backwards, folding his arms behind his head.] Dad's other name was "Insane Rampaging Bulletstorm", so I got no room to talk... and hell, he earned that one.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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