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

[kuyamu]

[ Hanzo makes a sound. it's involuntary, something low and wounded and awful that catches in the back of his throat, and his expression is dismayed like Reaper has twisted a knife in his gut.

for a moment, he isn't even there. the fight or flight reaction takes over his entire awareness, jump-started by a PTSD response — because he remembers fighting Genji, remembers his own overwhelming horror in the aftermath. but when he thinks of what was left of Genji, there's just blood and a body he can't recognise as his brother's. to hear this: not that Overwatch saved him, but found him in pieces, and to have it said against him like ammunition by Reaper, of all people— something just short-circuits. it must. Hanzo goes catatonic, standing there with his tea held in one white-knuckled fist.

the first sensation that returns to him is intense nausea, and his reflexive thought to put a hand over his mouth to keep himself from being sick means that he simply lets go of the mug he's holding. it falls over the balcony and shatters somewhere below. Hanzo shifts back a half-step, not from fear, but a horror that's entirely focused inward. ]

He— [ he doesn't know what defence he was going to make. he's trying to remember what Genji said to him, down in the tunnels below the city. he speaks again, voice croaking: ] You were with Overwatch.

[ it's a question, despite the lack of inflection. ]

[hellshot]

[He watches him, he hears that sound, and of all things he shouldn't feel is an odd sense of accomplishment. It's been years--decades, by now, since Genji had been brought into Overwatch. Decades since that witch of a doctor had put him back together, decades since he'd brought Genji into Blackwatch. Where he channelled all that rage and betrayal into covert missions under the watching eye of the world. The jobs noone wanted to do, a close-knit little unit of people who didn't have a problem getting their hands dirty for the sake of the world.

He remembers seeing the ninja in a hospital bed, he remembers asking what happened, and he remembered the rage that built up in his throat when he was told that it was the ninja's own brother that had caused the mess they found him in. That his brother was to be exalted for his actions, that his family had ordered the kid dead.

He remembers saying he'd put a bullet in the man's knees if he ever met with him, and that he'd let Genji finish the job.
Hearing, now, the choked up sound Hanzo makes, followed by the animated crash of the man's teacup as it hit the ground floors below--he shouldn't feel good about it.]

I was. You could even say that it existed because of me. [There's a sour sneer to that statement as he remains unmoving across from the man having a panic attack. He doesn't tear his eyes away from the man, his fingers still interlaced with themselves, resting against his own stomach.]

You don't look well. Maybe you should sit down.

[kuyamu]

I am fine.

[ the snarl is all defensiveness, an injured animal lashing out. Hanzo can barely even think straight; his heartbeat is painfully fast and he can feel it against his ribcage, in his throat, his body overloaded with fear that has no real origin and nowhere to go. he's not an idiot; he can't fight in this state, he knows the feeling of an inevitable breakdown, pathetic as it is. but— ]

You understand nothing of what happened between Genji and I.

[ he means it, that much at least. the only one who could possibly understand is Genji. even if the blame is Hanzo's regardless, no one but Genji could know what Hanzo should be blamed for, more than just wielding the blade. his weakness, his inability to appease the elders or to convince Genji to come to heel; those are more important than the fight that determined things between them.

even if all Hanzo can think of is Genji's lifeless body. his face frozen in shock and horror when Hanzo's sword swung the dragons down with it. in pieces, in pieces.

Hanzo manages to look composed, for the most part. but his expression can't hold its anger, crumpling with despair every time he even thinks of Genji, and although he's standing strong and upright, his hands are shaking so badly that he wouldn't be a threat even if he did have his bow on-hand. he needs to get away from here, not just from Reaper but all of it, everyone — Genji. he has to flee, but he will not turn and run from an enemy. he's enough of a disgrace without cowardice, too. ]

[hellshot]

[As calm as ever, he's still watching the other from where he sits. He won't deny that the man is right, he doesn't understand. How could he understand the quarrels of a Yakuza family? Of two boys separated by the 'will of a family?' He doesn't get it at all, but:]

I don't. But I understand what you did. And I was there to pick him up when he was thought dead. He was one of mine, after all.

Have you even apologised to him yet? Or do you not feel you need to? Or maybe you're just sorry you didn't properly finish the job.

[Blackwatch. Even if it was a bad memory for Reyes, Blackwatch had been his pride, his call to fame--what he'd used to protect the world, even if it meant breaking the rules. Genji had been a part of that. And knowing what he'd been through...]

...And I sincerely doubt that you're fine.

Isn't there a saying about a shaking leaf being the first to hit the ground?

[kuyamu]

[ that gets a full-body flinch, stronger than his steely posture. he hasn't. he hasn't apologised because there aren't adequate words for it, because there can be no forgiveness, no repentance unless Genji takes his head. that's the reasoning he has to give himself, anyway — in truth, he doesn't think he could do it. he is sorry; he knows that Genji deserves a thousand apologies and would not have to accept a single one of them.

but when Hanzo imagines kneeling down in front of Genji to apologise, he can't think of a word to say. even just trying, his entire throat closes up and something presses down on his chest so hard that his heart falters, like his own body is trying to suffocate him. he doesn't want to have to hear Genji tell him that it isn't enough. ]

That is none of your business! [ the anger is there, sharp as a blade, but his voice is strained far more with a deep anguish. ] He may have been one of your soldiers under duress, but he is my brother. Perhaps I am merely shaking with anger for the disrespect of thinking the two are equal.

[hellshot]

Equal? [He actually raises his head when Hanzo says that. He can feel the laugh bubbling up in his chest. Rising in old, dead lungs, rattling along the bones within the cavity before rising up and out of him in a dry, loud cackle. Smoke rises from behind his mask as he looses the sound to the air, head tilted back as a hand moves to press against his own chest--as if the laugh had taken something out of him. Air, if a dead man even needed it, or perhaps he'd even made himself dizzy by the sheer force of it.]

You lost any sort of equal footing with the man on a personal level the minute you first cut into him with your blade.

Don't put me on your level. I might be the terrorist here, Shimada...

[His hand falls back down to sit idle at his side.]

...but at least I've never put a bullet in someone I consider family.

[kuyamu]

I know that!

[ his voice cracks on the shout, going hoarse. Reaper's laughter makes him feel humiliated and ashamed just as much as it unsettles him, and his composure is quickly deteriorating. he wasn't prepared for this conversation; he can hardly bear it with Genji, and it's worse to hear his crimes from a stranger.

no amount of projected anger could make it seem as though Hanzo has any intention of violence. his posture is all defensive, shoulders drawn in tight enough to hurt all down his back, hands clenched into fists at his sides and head bowed. he looks terribly cornered, standing there backed up against the balcony railing. ]

Do you think I am proud of it?! [ he slams one hand down on the railing, hard enough that the metal rings, vibrating. ] What I have done can never be redeemed!

[ he should walk away from this. he's not an idiot; there's no way he intends to fight Reaper, knowing nothing about him and his methods. he doesn't even have his bow on-hand, left it sitting on his bed like a fool because he thought a world-renowned terrorist would have no interest in him, certainly not enough to start anything.

at the same time, though, he knows why he isn't leaving. this is what he wanted from Genji. this is the cruel jab at his open, vulnerable wounds that Genji started as a stranger in Hanamura and didn't follow through on when they found each other here. it feels like something he's been waiting for too long, to hear his own self-loathing in someone else's mouth, and it ends up rooting him in place. ]

I know that. [ and yet— ] And yet, Genji is my brother, and until he takes my head himself, that will remain true.