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

Yoko Taro and Toby Fox characters tbh

[bone_idle]

[ Yeah, yeah. A chance of a lifetime! Funny how there'x so many of these guys wondering the same thing: Why me? Thing is, there ain't really nothing that makes people like these two special, just a stray thought, a notion, a feeling that this wasn't where they belonged, or maybe even something they deserved, and boom!

Welcome to your new life!

Sans huffs a noise that sounds like it might have been a chuckle, if he could just commit to the sentiment. ]

Buddy, I dunno if you noticed, but between the two of us, you're the war-hardened professional. Don't think the guy sellin' you a hotdog's gotta leg to stand on.

[ There's a classic sight gag that could go with a statement like that, but the tripping hazard is a real one, and when you only have 1 HP, you avoid unnecessary risks. ]

So, what's your big plan?

[howlongiwonder]

True. But those who can't, or won't fight, can still worry for others.

[2B stretches her arms out wide before bringing them together. Enough getting lost in your own emotions. Her thoughts return to more down-to-earth matters.]

I was made to fight. It's the only thing I can do, so fight I will.

This place needs help, someone to defend it from many dangers. I know I'll be able to assist here.

[bone_idle]

[ The skeleton's used to expressive motion, monsters themselves are an earnest species. Maybe it's because monsters lack the physicality that humans have, too little corporeal baggage between where they end and their SOUL begins, maybe it's symptomatic of living their whole lives in the dreary underbelly of a dormant volcano.

Hell if Sans knows, it's all he's ever known.

It's a little surreal for him, seeing her gesture like this without the self-expression of magic to accompany it, and then in itself, a strange, alien idea in combination with someone who looks so... well, human. Where he's from, humans haven't used magic for, uh, a long time. Long before he came into the world.

So a part of him wonders what's up with that, what purpose it serves.

Humans -- or even the ones that LOOK human -- are pretty interesting. ]

Whatever floats your boat, pal. But, y'know, just sayin'. Doesn't have to be the only thing you can do, either.

[ Honestly, the 'necessity' of killing never sat well with Sans, and if he had his way, it never will. ]

But, hey! Pretty sure everybody's glad to keep enjoyin' a peaceful life. Maybe you could give it a shot too, yeah?

[howlongiwonder]

[2B exhales quietly. It's not that she doesn't want to live in peace. From everything, it's the one thing she used to hope for the most. However...]

I was told this is still a dangerous place. Aggressive creatures hide just beyond the city limits.

Someone has to keep this place secure from them.

[bone_idle]

[ No doubt.

Sans, who has never lived in war, has only ever lived through the lingering after-effects on his kind. They made do. But he knows his own people, knows they prefer the things that come naturally to them - peace, compassion, love. All the talk of war on humankind seemed more like a hare-brained, last-ditch effort to rouse the people, to get them looking towards a more distant future, when a dismal existence in exile was causing monsters to Fall Down left and right.

Eh. The King was just tryin' to do what he thought was best.

He finds himself taking a moment to consider what that's like, having a life so totally different from his own, being a soldier whose only purpose was to fight. How coming here might feel to someone like that. ]

If it makes you feel less lost, then go for it. That's, uh, what this is, right?

[ Any illusion of thoughtfulness in his rumbled tone is banished when he adds, with a lilt of good humor: ]

Good thing the guards are always hiring.

[howlongiwonder]

Yeah...

[That's not much of an answer, since 2B looks up again, thoughtfully.

This time though, she cracks a small smile. For some reason, this strange conversation with the strange skeleton man managed to make her feel a little more at peace.]

lmao protect this smile? protect this smile.

[bone_idle]

[ Sans's attention had strayed towards the sky, still a heart-stopping marvel if he had a heart to speak of, and happens to turn his sedate gaze to note her expression because he'd caught the movement of her head out of the corner of one eye socket. He doesn't visibly startle, but he does have to wonder, for a moment, at the thing that manages to penetrate the general malaise of apathy that defines his day-to-day.

A prickle of empathy. That's the sort of smile that could inspire someone to hope it returns again, and often. Like stumbling on a flower struggling to bloom in the dark.

Crap. ]

Heh heh, that expression on your face, I almost didn't recognize ya. [ The skeleton shrugs, leaning to one side to note something behind her. Nearby, another festival-goer refills a bottle from a water fountain and strolls back to join two friends, chatting enthusiastically about a stall they intend to visit selling ice cream.

Sans turns his eye lights back to 2B. ]

Hey. Since we're here, howzabout you get that ketchup off your Heinz?

[howlongiwonder]

Is... that so? Ahem.

[2B coughs quietly. Good thing for her that androids do not blush easily, not that she's very hard to read at the moment.]

Anyway, as I said, don't worry about it. My maintenance will take care of it easily.

[bone_idle]

[ Heh, she's good at stamping down the tics that might appear on anyone else, but there's just enough of that 'cough' that he identifies it as an embarrassed tell of sorts.

Even if Sans hadn't been from a culture where robots had souls, he'd have been hard pressed to be convinced she doesn't have one.

As it is, he sees no reason to suspect otherwise. Somehow, it's the harder-won expressions that seem more precious. Careful with this one, Sans. ]

Uh... you keep sayin' that. Is that a thing they do here?

[howlongiwonder]

Not really... not as far as I know.

It's a procedure I can take care of by myself. All androids have to undergo maintenance at regular intervals.

[bone_idle]

[ So she's going to keep that stuff on until whenever that is, huh?

....Not that Sans can judge; he hasn't done his own laundry since he got here, just keeps on wearing the same stuff. Hasn't really been inclined to go clothes shopping, either.

But at this rate, he supposes he's not in a position to go lecturing her, in any case. Not his style. ]

Ok, cool. In that case, I'm thinkin' it's time for my own maintenance. We monsters call 'em naps.

See you around, Toob.

[howlongiwonder]

Naps, huh...

[Her gaze follows Sans as he's taking his leave.]

2B is fine.

[How many times will she have to repeat herself? Quite often, seems like. Somehow 2B feels this isn't the last meeting between the two of them.]