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

[realimperfect]

It was easy on Bajikan - if only because I was always thirsty for another overly sugared drink. And every fried food they provided. [ Basically: her diet had taken a major crash on the alien planet, though she didn't show one single bit of it. She's lucky that she's got good biology, at the very least, to make sure that excursions to planets with luring scents doesn't totally derail everything.

And lots of shopping with Yuuri for clothes that only partially followed her here. ]

The air and gravity are things I'm very much enjoying. Also not feeling as though I exist in some twilight realm where the lighting is always complete shit - [ She pauses to consider what he says about the place seemingly being more at peace with itself, and, eventually, nods. ]

It does. I'm still not sure I'll be so fast to jump in to a mission as I was with Oros, though. Maybe I'll spend some time in the police force first, feel things out. [ Her eyes dart to the people around, as if on guard for something to happen, and with that check coming up blank, takes another drink from her glass. ]

I don't necessarily miss the place of home so much as the people. Well, person and two autoreivs...

[genice]

They did have a very surprising select of fried everything. Did you try their different pickles?

( He'd run into a whole slew of pickled everythings too, both familiar and unfamiliar. That'd been fun.

Regardless, most of what he does right now is listen, keeping conversation flowing with a light statement or two. She's far more on guard; his watching of surroundings is more laid back, but equally present. He doesn't trust in a world that is incapable of unpleasant surprises. Not anymore. )

I have no idea on the moon what an autoreiv is. ( he admits easily enough. just as he considers what she says about missions... and nods his head, without adding much. he doesn't have the training or personality to simply head out and Explore; but Yuri might. Yuri might be a reason he does, in the end.

so he tips his mug to her without sipping from it this time. )

What's the phrase? Home is where the heart is. Places may have a part of your heart, but I've found individuals can hold a larger portion.

( he's doubly thankful for both Yuuri and Makkachin being here and present with him. just as he notes, idly: )

So the police force? Do you think they'll have you testing through all their basic laws and structures, in a position like that?

[realimperfect]

I tried a few.... Others scared me away with appearances, I'll admit. [ Floating (what looked like, at least) animals in jars for pickling hadn't really done anything other then turn her stomach, and.. since she'd had the choice to say no and try something that appeared more appetizing, she'd taken that liberty. She may have come from a place where they'd eaten beans for long spans of time, but there was no way in hell she was desperate enough for other foods to eat something like that. Maybe one day she'd gain the ability to become that adventurous with food, but as of right now she'll reserve her rights to be slightly picky. ]

Autoreivs are a lot like.. robots. I don't know if you ever met K2-SO, but like him. Just.. move advanced in their building and processing centers. They had the ability to actively learn new things, words, etcetera as well as be programmed for specific tasks. Each Romdeau citizen was assigned either a companion type or entourage type as a child depending on what your intended place in the Dome was.. [ Admittedly, she may have just confused him more concerning the social ins and outs of Romdeau Dome, but.. it was what it was. She knew that those questions would always fly when he started talking about things that concerned her childhood home. ]

My childhood home is currently rubble, so. People may be better to rest my nostalgic notions in anyway -

Most likely. I wouldn't be very trustworthy of any police force if they didn't enforce some kind of testing standard. Granted, laws from Romdeau are likely more strict than the ones here in Riverview. I would be, genuinely, shocked if they were not.

[genice]

I liked Kay-two.

( he means that, too, watching the crowd for a while as she speaks. he can make sense of it, but he wonders what Sombra might have said; or what various of those he'd known the last few months would say about their comparative android or robotic pasts.

especially when he hears they're assigned to people at birth. or were. what a bizarre system to stumble right into knowing nothing about. he nods and accepts it as is for the time being. curiosity can and will wait. )

I'm sorry to hear that. ( about her home. regardless of loving or hating it, he's felt that disconnect of a place you cannot return to, for better or worse. ) Though when it comes to strict or otherwise, I find I'm curious as to the differences. When you find out, I'd love to hear from you.

[realimperfect]

I did, too. In certain ways he reminded me of my autoreiv, Iggy. [ Iggy was perhaps the autoreiv that she would miss the most, of all of them. Pino and Kristeeva were good company, from time to time, sure - but there was just something about Iggy, who'd been programmed for her -

Despite his end, at least. ]

It's.. a loss, but not a great one. [ Words are plucked and chosen carefully, here. She's not so callous as to think she will never miss her grandfather or Daedalus, but... those times will be few and far between, considering how they'd parted. ]

I'll send you a message. So far, by these parties and everything I'm going to venture to say it will be much more relaxed.

[genice]

Ah, you weren't there for the Winter Festival, were you?

( this isn't a direct response to her statement on rules in her Dome versus Riverview. it's Victor remembering the weeks prior to what he claimed as the New Year on the Eluvio.

he focuses on their surroundings again, lips curling into an absent smile. )

You're probably right. From what I understand of what you've said about your home, at least.

( Still, as they'd both agreed on, for all it's more relaxed in comparison here, it's also more... normally anonymous. They're part of a crowd. Not the most important part. Newest, yes, but the "newest" keeps changing. There's a sense of movement and relative equality in the ranks of civilians, and a normal sense of how to approach and work with the established authority structures. It's not transparent; but it is in a sense approachable. People talk back. There's no void into which he sends endless messages to die. )