riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

Entry tags:

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

Not this. [The lump of blankets slowly moves up the bed until Wikus is lying on his side with his back to Tolemi. He lets out a long sigh like a deflating balloon. It'll probably be awhile before he feels like moving again.]

...Not yet.

[With ears like his he doesn't missed what the man said. May as well have been said right into his ear.]

What good is ending up in some freaky other world? They didn't really think through the benefits package here.

[Was that an attempt at a joke? More like a fourth of one. Tolemi isn't that great at humor on the fly. Sarcasm yes, humor no.]

[However small a percentage of a joke that was, it still manages to pull a muffled snort out of Wikus that almost resembles a laugh.]

At least the beds are nice.

[Certainly better than a dissection table.]

Edited 2017-04-12 16:58 (UTC)

Of course a city on a moon would prioritize making sure people can sleep well at night.

[He says it in a tone that says if he were any less mature he'd be rolling his eyes like a teenager.]

Not that'd I know. I haven't had time to sleep in it just yet. Too busy.

It's a good priority. [You spend a night in a dirty shack with newspaper and cardboard for bedding and you really learn to appreciate a nice mattress and clean sheets.]

I've had enough confusion and being poked and prodded for one day. [Not to mention the rest of his week.] You couldn't pay me to get out of this bed.

[Tolemi wouldn't disagree with that, although he's spent weeks at a time living in pet pens so he's not one to ask about living arrangements. It's not like it's his place to tell someone what they should or shouldn't be doing, but he isn't that great at staying out of people's business when they don't seem to be taking care of themselves. Whether or not that's because of something outside their control doesn't matter.]

Whatever, man, but you sleep better with food in your stomach.

Eating means getting up, man.

[He actually is hungry. He hasn't really eaten, since, well...

Wikus actually does laugh this time, though it's a bit on the edge of hysterical.]

Fok, you know the last thing I had to eat? Fokken cat food, man!

[Not even hiding the wrinkle of his nose at how gross that sounds.]

If that's what you've been living off no wonder you look like roadkill.

[Sorry he's not one for softening his words too much.] Get up, I'm making soup and sandwiches.

[Wikus gives a whiny groan not unlike a teenager being asked to get up for school, and curls up tighter in his blanket cocoon.]

Not getting up. You can't make me.

[His stomach has different ideas, however, and it lets out a loud growl of its own at the mention of soup and sandwiches.]

Are you five? Get your ass up and eat. Then you can sleep however much you want.

[Not putting up with that. He's not that sympathetic to your plight, even if he does have the urge to do something.] If you want to let your stomach eat you from the inside, do it where other people don't have to hear it.

[If he was five he'd be home in his own bed with his mom to comfort him instead of here, turning into a Prawn.

But with another groan, he does force himself to slowly stand on unsteady feet. The blanket cape stays, though, bundled tight around him and keeping his asymmetrical face hooded.]

Fine, I'm coming, man. Ugh.

[So much eye-rolling going on. Tolemi moves into the kitchen area easily, already going into the fridge to pull out supplies. There's a bread box--well for the thing they call bread but isn't exactly the same--that he goes for next. He moves around the kitchen efficiently, grabbing ingredients and turning on the stove then moving to grab a glove before digging into the shelves of pots and pans for a soup pot. No need to test just what kind of metal they are made of and get himself burned just yet.]

Sit down and try not to get sick over anything. [By which he means bleed, don't bleed on anything.]

[It's okay, Tolemi, he's got several protective layers of fabric between his ruined skin and the rest of the world. He probably won't get blood on things. Maybe.

He eases himself into a chair at the dining room table, immediately pillowing his head on his arms.]

I'm not sick, I'm just fokked.

When you look like that there ain't much of a difference.

[And just like that he's dropping a sandwich made with something that looks like lettuce, cheese, and meat slices--that definitely don't smell like ham, but looks ham like and isn't offensive to his nose, to he considers it good enough--and drops it in front of Wikus.]

Nibble on that while I make a soup. [It might take a bit longer as he finds supplies to make a decent one when he doesn't know what half these foods are.]

The difference is you can't catch ugly.

[Oh, hey, sandwich. Wikus stares at the offering for awhile, wondering if he'll lose more teeth if he tries to eat it. His stomach makes a loud argument that food is more important than teeth.

He wrangles his blanket so he can use his hands without losing his cover, then picks up the sandwich. It certainly looks delicious, and hungry as he is, he can feel his mouth watering.

Before he takes a bite, though, he glances up at Tolemi.]

Why are you doing this?

[He's already turned his back to him and is setting out what he found and going through it on the counter by the stove. Some of this has to be worth using in a soup and not potentially deadly. When he hears the question he turns his head just enough to take a look at the man that says "Are you serious?"

Then he turns back to the task in front of him.]

If you have to ask that then you must look worse than you feel, bruh.

Look, man, you don't know me. A lot of people aren't going to cook for a stranger just because he looks like shit.

[In fact, he's pretty sure the worse a stranger looks, the fewer the number of people willing to help.

He hesitates another moment, staring down his sandwich.]

Just... Thanks, though.

[He finally takes the plunge and bites into the sandwich. Chewing hurts, and the bread tastes weird, but none of his teeth immediately come loose, so he counts it as a success. Voraciously, though tenderly, he devours the food.]

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introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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