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

[bone_idle]

Complain? Eh, sounds not just like a hassle, but a real drag. But take the occasional pointed dig? Sure, because subterranean monsters can get their salt on just as well as any human on the Surface. This guy, to his credit, not only understands what he means by 'human', but seems to be right on the same page with him about a few things related to the species.

But Sans leaves it at that, waving his bony hand in front of the grinning rictus that makes up his face.

"I'm getting the distinct impression none of the other folks here ever had anything to do with it, so," he shrugs, unimpressively. "'Sides, all that is water under the bridge. Since we've established that you ain't another Earthling, what do you call where you're from?"

The prospect that he might be an alien's pretty exciting -- though, if he's fair, ALL of them are technically aliens here. But the fact so many of those in quarantine are human (or very human-like) isn't one that the skeleton's failed to notice. There is a distinct lack of any monsterkind representation, far as he can tell.

Well, except the 'monsters' outside of the fence.

[eyeforaneye]

"I wonder if that's convenient or inconvenient, to be suddenly rid of any you might carry a grudge against."

For Sasuke, at least, the answer would've changed over time. Revenge doesn't age well, especially when paired with new perspectives. Being here is sure to bring even more if he's already meeting different species, a thought that has him glancing back over out of the corner of his eye.

"I was born in the Fire Country. Did you start off in the Underground or are you older than that?"

[bone_idle]

"Good thing I don't like carrying anything," jokes the skeleton, except... yeah, he does hold grudges, much as he likes to tell himself he's got his reasons, that it could always be worse, at least he's not like those humans who go out there and actually kill people, right?

Right?

But Sans, he's read whatever he could get his hands on when he was a smaller bag of bones, never once heard of anything on Earth called a fire country. So, that answers that. Hell, for all he knows, the guy could actually be from some distant galaxy or a really distant future, long after the remnants of his 'current' society have succumbed to the inexorable tides of time and entropy. But that'd be too interesting.

He's probably just from another planet entirely.

(Hint: that's actually the most interesting option for Sans.)

"Born under the mountain, buddy." He would have said 'born and raised', but, uh. That'd be less than truthful. "Weren't too many of us that lived long enough to remember the War," or the sky the rest of them never saw. "The King and Queen, sure. Gerson, who's as old as dirt and as down to earth as they come. Guys like me?" He shrugs.

"But that don't mean much," he adds, eyeing Sasuke again. "I'm guessin' even a guy your age has seen his fair share of war."

[eyeforaneye]

Sasuke assumes the first comment is meant as a deflection, debating calling him out on it, but instead he decides to file it away for later. While he's hardly one for jokes he is one for avoiding his own personal topics when they're brought up against his will; this must be Sans's way of handling it.

"You changed to that topic quickly," he counters with little emotion, silent for a moment or two after. A less perceptive person might assume that he's irritated or that it's a sensitive topic, maybe, even with how calm he seems, but even beneath that neutral expression there's no real reaction. He's accustomed to talking about this.

"Does that mean that you haven't, if yours was so long ago?"

[bone_idle]

Honestly, a lot of Sans's responses tend to be jokes (AND deflection), so, yeah, it's not like he's wrong, exactly.

Sasuke takes note.

Sans is already keeping pace -- the guy's sharp as a tack, and direct at that. He supposes there's something admirable in there, but a potential pain in the tailbone, too. Still, there's no real guessing where you stand with a guy as unafraid to speak his mind as this human seems to be. That's pretty valuable.

"Yep," admits the skeleton freely, somehow making the 'p' pop despite lacking things like lips.

"Didn't even try to deny it, huh? At least you're honest. So, Sasuke," he says, by way of a compromise, or an appeasement, "Now that you're here, what's your plan?"

[eyeforaneye]

No, denying it would be a lie he couldn't justify. Deception for its own sake has never been something Sasuke could stomach, really, too straightforward and goal-oriented to entertain needless fibs... and too many times bitten by them courtesy of someone else. The world doesn't really need more of that.

... unless, of course, the cause is good enough, and therein lies Sasuke's determined hypocrisy.

"I don't see that it's advantageous for me to share details with you unless you could be of use. Shouldn't that be the cautious response of someone who's 'seen war' before?"

[bone_idle]

Sans, he lies like a rug if it spares him -- even temporarily -- from having to deal with a problem. Heck, he'll try to remain uninvolved in something that smells like trouble for as long as possible. Thing is, he can't exactly afford to take it so easy anymore. Look at this -- he's expected to sleep in a room with about 9 other humans(?).

Considering their reputation among monsters, that makes him a little tense.

Looking at Sasuke, Sans suddenly chuckles at his answer. Honest? Screw that, he's blunt. Bones clatter under his clothes as he shakes through his laughter, even going through the gesture of holding the stomach he doesn't have.

"Hey, you're right! And, uh, that's not gonna happen. I pride myself on being absolutely useless," he jokes, not so much puffing up with pride as indulging in some self-depreciative humor. "That way nobody expects much."

He returns to leaning on the rail, grinning at him, "Anyway, none of my beeswax, right? That's fine, I'll buzz off if you ain't up for small talk."

[eyeforaneye]

At least their shared sense of paranoia is something that they could potentially bond over, but that's not the easiest topic to broach with two wary individuals. Sans continues to talk a good game while Sasuke watches, barely raising a brow at the sudden laughter that overtakes him. It hadn't been a joke, but-- Well, he can understand wry humor better than other types.

"In that case, we're entirely opposite men." Yes, he's going to grace this skeleton with the 'man' title. What else would be a better alternative?

"I can't make the effort to engage in smalltalk while you're shirking the burden of expectations. You should put more work into your existence."

[bone_idle]

One might question what could blossom in a field sown with suspicion and paranoia, but then, the only people who can relate with those who have been through some shit are those who have gone through it themselves. But Sans? Ha ha, he's just a guy who likes bad jokes and even more terrible puns.

Sasuke is... man, all Sans can think is maybe a soldier of some kind. His choice of words is another point in his favor -- he doesn't go dismissing him, a monster, as something other than another person.

That's more than he expects from the average human, honestly.

"I'll keep that in mind," chuckles the skeleton, brushing that off with another wave of his bony hand, not offended. Not particularly inclined to reassess his level of engagement in society, either. Maybe once he might've, but eh, seems like a hassle these days. "But, hey, don't lemme overstay my welcome."

He's prickly, but that's fine. He knows when not to push his luck. Sans slides away from the railing with a wiggle of phalanges, "I'll see ya around, pal."

[eyeforaneye]

Given how the conversation has progressed thus far, Sasuke fully expects his words to go unheeded. Should any make any kind of impact then that'll be something he assumes will be processed in private, alone, along with the rest of Sans's feelings. Yeah, he feels you, man.

"Wait," he interjects suddenly, head remaining unturned and gaze still ostensibly focused on the scenery before them.

Surely he must have something important to say, as a man of so few words. Surely. Either that, or...

"Are you the one that incorrectly remade the beds?"

[bone_idle]

There's no answer, but before that, Sasuke would very likely be aware that he is suddenly alone. No illusion, no minds playing tricks on eyes, there was definitely a skeleton here on the terrace a second ago, and now there isn't.

But he probably is the guy who did it. When in doubt, blame the new guy.