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

[anthropophagite]

[ make it stop? could they even do something like that? If they could, he has every interest to know, but honestly Kaneki has a feeling they'd tell him no, that they can't change him back.

He nods softly at Wikus' words. ]

Why were you turned? [ Kaneki has to ask. He never learned why he was turned into a ghoul or even how - these are all questions he has no answers for and honestly fears the answers ]

[onthehalfshell]

[Wikus gives a little shrug.]

It was just an accident. I found this alien... stuff. It got on me and a few hours later I was turning Prawn.

[anthropophagite]

That sounds... awful. [ and who leaves something like that just lying around? ]

Was no one able to help you, back in your world?

[onthehalfshell]

It is.

[He sighs, staring blankly out over the colorful panorama of the picnic.]

There was this one guy, this Prawn, who said he could fix me. But he had to leave first. Three years. He said he'd be back in three years.

[He lets his Prawn hand rest in his lap, staring at the long green fingers, the bandaged stump of his thumb.]

Maybe he lied. If I was him I think I'd have lied. Who knows. Maybe the alien was the better man, between the two of us. [He punctuates that with a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob.]

[anthropophagite]

Leave where?

[ he goes silent for a bit ] I hope he returns. And- I hope they can help you here, too.

[onthehalfshell]

Back home, to his planet. [He waves his hand vaguely up at the sky.]

Yeah... [There's nothing about Wikus's slumped posture that reads as hopeful.

His attention shifts back to Kaneki.]

Fok, sorry, man. I doubt you came to hear some freak's life story.

[anthropophagite]

No, it's alright- [ kaneki shakes his head, reassuringly ] And, maybe it's not my place, but I don't think you should call yourself that, Wikus-san.

You aren't a "freak". You are someone who was shoved into a difficult situations that you have no control of.

[onthehalfshell]

Don't see why I can't be both. [A pause.] Thanks, though. You're a good kid.

[He gives Kaneki a good look, then points at his own mismatched left eye, signaling the teen's eyepatch.]

So what's your story, man?

[anthropophagite]

Eh? [ story?

OH. the eye. Right. Yeah. ]

Uhm- I had a bit of an accident back home. I don't remember a lot of it, but metal beams fell on me. [ sure. Honestly that's the theory the doctors and police come up with, and Kaneki did not want to mention there was a girl trying to eat him. ] It affected my kidney and my eye got a bit weird. I had an organ transplant, actually- I'm still taking my immunosuppression pills.

[ a pause ] Well, I should be, they didn't come along, but the doctors are helping. [ half lies and half truths. He did ask for the pills, since that's what his doctor back home prescribed, but was told they aren't necessary anymore (and they don't actually doing anything because of Kaneki's ghoul physiology). ]

[onthehalfshell]

"Metal beams? Fok, man, how did you survive that? [Industrial accidents are generally seriously awful.]

You'd never know it from the look of you. The doctors here, they help fix you up or something?

[anthropophagite]

I'm not sure- I don't remember what happened. [ metals beams WERE involved. they just didn't fell on him. ]

Well, the doctors didn't do much. I was practically healed up back home. Apart from my surgery, I don't have any scars or anything. [ if the doctors bought it, you will too, Wikus ]

[onthehalfshell]

You are one lucky fokken kid! How long were in the hospital?

[anthropophagite]

Almost four months- [ there were very long four months. Months that included slowly becoming unable to eat anything.

Terrible four months ]

It was a difficult operation and a difficult post-op. But everything is fine. [ no it's not ] I've a huge scar, that's the only thing left from the accident.

[onthehalfshell]

Shit, man, that sounds awful. [He'd never been in a hospital more than a week before. He can't imagine being stuck in one for months. Especially now. He can hardly stand being in a hospital at all anymore.]

You must be glad to be out and about now.

[anthropophagite]

I left the hospital a couple of months ago. [ he pauses, counting the months with his fingers. Rize-san attacked him at the end of June, he was discharged at the end of October and it was December right before he arrived to this place... ]

... it has been almost half year since the accident. [ he mostly mutters this to himself. Ever since he was discharged from the hospital, everything happened so fast, everything was insane. Rize-san, Hide, Nishio-senpai, Tsukiyama-san and now Touka-chan's brother...

kaneki looks back at Wikus, shaking his head ] I'd rather be home but- [ HOME IS KINDA TERRIBLE RIGHT NOW ] i will just need some time to get used to this place.

[onthehalfshell]

Well, congratulations on surviving your near death experience, man.

[He goes silent at the mention of home. Home is with Tania, in his own house. Home isn't what's waiting for him on the other side of the portal, District 9 is, and a three-year wait for Christopher Johnson.]

Yeah, I guess I will too.

[He doesn't want to stay, but better to stay here and hope they can fix him rather than face that slum and the people responsible for it.]

[anthropophagite]

Thank you...? [ is it normal to thank people for saying something like that? kaneki doesn't know, but he still says it. ]

We are all together here, and all in the same boat in a way. So I don't think it'll be that bad. [ he hopes. Honestly? Kaneki is scared to death and he doesn't think he can be here. The moment they find out what he is, he'll have the perimeter guard calling him a monster and pushing him out, he is certain of that.

So he will try to pretend to be normal for as long as he can, he will to remember how he lived back and just... hope he'll manage it. And lying to himself that "it won't be that bad" will be his way to manage it. ]

[onthehalfshell]

[The awkwardness of Kaneki's 'thank you' makes Wikus self-conscious of the fact that he's just some weird guy who butted into some young adult's reading time.

This kid is honestly way too polite.]

I hope not, man. [He could do with a little less excitement in his life.

He reaches to pick up his abandoned dessert and grimaces when he finds that it's been discovered by a contingent of tiny insects while he was talking.]

Nobody's going to be wanting that now...

[anthropophagite]

[ let's be fair, kaneki is awkward regardless of what is happening around him.

He smiles at the comment ]

It's a shame to throw it away when it's good - but at least now you don't have to feel bad for doing that.

[onthehalfshell]

[Awkwardness for everyone!]

I guess at least someone is enjoying it. [Even if 'someone' in this case is bugs.]

I'm going to go get rid of this. It was, ah, it was good talking with you. Kaneki.

[anthropophagite]

[ kaneki nods ] It was a pleasure meeting you, Wikus-san.