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

[onthehalfshell]

It's sad when a grown man - older than Victor by a fair chunk even! - has the bearing of a teenager, but the disenfranchised youth are particularly skilled at antisocial lurking.

At the mention of ear scratches, Wikus finds himself glancing up and down between Makkachin and his owner.

"I can pet him?" he asks for confirmation, as if it's hard to believe someone would let him. Honestly, he's actually surprised that the dog isn't barking or growling at him. Subconsciously he'd been expecting it to be like a horror movie, where animals always know about the monster before anyone else.

Of course, Prawns aren't really monsters, are they? (But maybe he is.)

[genice]

Makkachin has also been introduced to and used to far more alien smelling and looking aliens than this poor man, not that Victor knows that's going on, and not that Makkachin can comment on any of it. He reacts more to intent than anything else; Wikus isn't trying to attack. To Makkachin, that's enough to make him a potential friend.

To Victor, who pays attention to how his dog interacts with others, it means much the same.

"Yes, of course. He loves making new friends. He also loves if you scratch right over his haunches, but the ears? I've seen Makkachin melt for a good ear scratching." Melt being more of a flopping over or leaning into the person giving him ear scratchings, but it all lead to about the same result of blind canine adoration.

[onthehalfshell]

Wikus is still hesitant as he crouches down and reaches out a hand to scratch behind Makkachin's ears.

It's his human hand, of course, the other still buried in his hoodie pocket. Even that hand isn't entirely normal, though. The hospital has provided him with little caps to keep his soft, nailless fingertips protected. The caps don't look wholly like regular fingernails, but they do allow for some pretty good ear scratches.

"Heh." The sound falls out of him almost without volition, and a smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. "Good boy..."

[genice]

Makkachin accepts the attention as his due, wagging his tail and leaning in to the touch. He's just as likely to try and give Wikus a lick: he's just affectionate and recognises very little about personal boundaries. Traits his owner can share often enough.

"He is," Victor says instead, agreeing with the nonsensical sort of statement delivered. "And he knows it, if you couldn't already tell. Have you ever been a pet owner yourself?"

Easy conversation, noting the oddity of something about his hand, but not particularly what. Nor is it his business; not at present. Perhaps not ever, at all.

[onthehalfshell]

Now he's definitely smiling, his ear scratching growing in enthusiasm at the lick.

"Not since I was a boy. My mom, she had this little Yorkshire Terrier, he was the tiniest fokken dog. And my dad, he wanted a big manly dog, I mean he loved the tiny thing, but he didn't want to admit it... Anyway, so this cute tiny sweet fokken thing, and he names it 'Butch'."

Wikus sniffs slightly. "Mom wanted to name him 'Daisy', but she let Dad have that. It's how they were. Mom always got her way, and Dad pretended he had a say in the while thing- Shit."

A tear drops onto his hand and he realizes he's started crying. His left hand makes a brief appearance from his pocket, giving a quick swipe of the bandaged back of his hand across his eyes before tucking it away again.

There's certainly no mistaking two green tentacles for human fingers no matter how briefly seen, though.

"Sorry," he mumbles. He probably would have got up and hurried off in embarrassment, except he really doesn't want to stop petting Makkachin at the moment.

[genice]

Oh dear God what is he supposed to do with a crying stranger? Victor stiffens, just enough to be a cue to Makkachin, who handles this like most things: by trying to lick the tears off this not-a-stranger-must-be-a-friend-of-the-pack's face. He's no better at handling these things, really, but it turns out most people prefer doggie kisses than Victor scrambling for a response to make the crying stop.

It's not hard to understand, at least. Victor already knows he's going to be hurting fiercely when Makkachin...

Well. Best not to borrow trouble from the inevitabilities of life.

"There's a lot to miss, even if it wasn't there for us back home," he says instead, trying to give this guy a reassuring smile. Loss of a pet, loss of a family, loss of a sort of sensibility given in... any way shape or form? He doesn't even know what to make of the tentacles: that's more information than he can process, and not even the weirdest oddity he's run into, physically speaking.

[onthehalfshell]

"Sorry. Fok. I didn't mean to-" Make things incredibly awkward and uncomfortable. Makkachin's attempts to cheer him up have him laughing a little, though, even as he gently tries to push the little dog away. "C'mon, man, you're getting drool all over me. I probably taste like shit."

Giving the dog another good ear ruffling, he stands up, wiping at his face with his human hand this time. He's now got more than one reason not to meet Victor's gaze.

"Sorry, man," he apologizes again. "It's just- my parents- what they must think of me right now- Sorry."

He really needs to stop oversharing, but his bottled up feelings are all shook up and trying to foam out of him.