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

[greyjane]

Not the least, sweetheart.

[And it's an easy question besides. She delights in her powers and abilities, even if she is hell and gone ignorant of the more stringent sciences behind them. She knows how they work by instinct, not academic knowledge. She holds her hand up (the one farthest from him, in case he's a jumpy sort) and wiggles her fingers a bit for sheer theatrics. Little blue sparks, bright as a sunburst, fall in a cascade from her hand.

Besides, his curiosity is cute.]

In layman's terms I'm an electrokinetic. But the constructs are sort of a form of energy manipulation that manifests as electrokinesis. See?

[She doesn't need to make the gestures while she's doing things, it's just sort of habit (and the aforementioned theatrics) so where those sparks fall, they coagulate into a small balloon animal (nothing earthly, but perhaps a cross between an otter and a mongoose) that 'floats' its way on over to him. It has the appearance of a malleable surface, but her constructs only have give and flex to them when she concentrates on doing it.]

[fingerstripes]

[ Sufficiently enchanted, he reaches a hand up to touch the small, floating construct, stealing a quick glance her way to check that she really doesn't mind. ]

Man, you must be a hit at parties. [ And the stupid grin on his face probably gives away more there than he'd like. When he remembers that he makes an effort to stifle it, leaning his chin on hand instead. ]

But you can probably do a lot more with that than dazzle the neophytes of the multiverse. [ So maybe he's baiting just a little. ]

[greyjane]

[You don't need to bait her in the least, Dick, she has a soldier's soul. Simple, unadorned. She is direct and in most cases without deceit. It isn't that she doesn't lie, it's that her lies are rarely ones of dire consequence - mostly about her own life. Certain particulars of her powerset (she can stop a man's sinoatrial node a mile out, for one, and that she keeps under her hat.) and of her life - things like Janirak and Evichta that bear no repeating in polite or ignorant company. Things that are under a microscope along the Lattice.

She honestly can't remember the last time a televised interview didn't ask her about one or the other.

So, she laughs.]

Caught me. Yes, it has more applications than just amusing the masses, but I'll confess to that being my favourite. [In a deadpan,] I also make an excellent battery.

[fingerstripes]

I don't know why I'm surprised. [ Even Kory couldn't do that, he's almost sure.

He's lost for a moment, remembering other places. Other worlds he's seen. Wondering what kind of place would produce a woman like this. ]

Honestly I'd probably take the power to amuse the masses over the battery thing too.

...Not that that isn't still cool as hell.

[greyjane]

That's the kicker, isn't it? Entertainment never goes out of style. If your version of humanity is anything like mine, anyway.

[She flashes him a wry smile. There are twenty-nine planets in the Lattice, she's been around the block a time or two. There are plenty of differences across languages, cultures, religions. Even attitudes towards culgenics. Yet, independently of each other, well before the construction of the Lattice, each of them had some form of theatre. Each had music, each had poetry.

Each, also, had war.

Makes a body think.]

So do I get to ask you questions about why you're taking your dinner on a rooftop while wearing a mask?

[fingerstripes]

Sure. Why not? [ And he gives her a smile, all white teeth. Deep in his heart of hearts he's always enjoyed this game a little more than he probably should. ]

No promises on a straight answer, but you can give it a shot.

[greyjane]

['Superhero identities' are a little beyond her, honestly. So many people in her universe, along the Lattice have some sort of preternatural power that the idea of hiding one's identity to take advantage of what you can do, all for the sake of hiding in plain sight the rest of the time is just not a concept that ever developed on any of the worlds she's been.

So she is curious, but not exactly to the point of pressing him on it. He's obviously not wearing a mask so he can rob a bank.

With an airy wave of her hand,]

I'll take a squiggly answer if needs be. Did you get lost on your way to a BDSM convention?

[Yes this is her very serious question, Dick, sorry.]

[fingerstripes]

[ He lets out the kind of choked, strangled laugh that's meant to convey how incredibly smooth and unflappable he is and probably suggests the exact opposite thing. Whatever he'd been expecting from her, it wasn't that. ]

...What, is it the stripes? [ He picks at a sleeve for a moment, tucking self-consciousness away under a smirk. His gaze flicks towards her again, eyebrow raised. ]

It is the stripes, isn't it.

[greyjane]

[That merits a rather delighted laugh.]

The stripes, most definitely. The boots don't help your cause any either.

[A pointed look to that Bat-patented footwear, silicon soles and all.]

[fingerstripes]

I'll mention it to my stylist. [ Rather than shuffle his feet he props them out in front of him instead, all careless confidence again. ]

I guess the tall, dark, and dashing motif kind of needs the right ambiance to work.

[greyjane]

[There is something altogether guarded about him that goes beyond simply wearing a mask - the purpose of which is undoubtedly to hide his identity. Rather ridiculous when the population of folks from Elsewhere is less than a hundred, but Shai's not particularly interested in divining that secret besides. She's spent too much of her life being picked at and needled about her own history to begrudge a stranger their privacy.]

Oh, I think you do all right for yourself. A little charm goes a long way, after all.

[A cheeky little grin.]

I'm Shai, by the by. Is there something I can call you by?

[She phrases that delicately (for her, given that she is altogether about as subtle as a wrecking ball) in the interest of avoiding any reciprocal pressures. He's a nice enough fellow.]

[fingerstripes]

[ It's not a choice in phrasing that escapes him, and the consideration implied there strikes him as endearing. ]

Nightwing works. It's good to meet you, Shai. [ And the smile he gives her is genuine. ]

So what brings you to the better side of Pizza Heaven?

[greyjane]

Besides the charming company, you mean?

[She gestures upwards.]

I'm used to being up there a ways. Quite a ways, in fact, so having both feet planted firmly on the ground is a bit of a conundrum to me.

[She doesn't miss spaceflight in any reaching, tragic way. Not the way she misses the Ephemera, or her crew, or Liranya and Orpheo. She doesn't really have the room in her heart to miss space, specifically.]

Thought a quiet stroll under the stars would put me in the mind of home.

[It's both a lie and a truth, wrapped up in one complicated, ill-advised pile. Because the only planet she's ever bothered to stroll about with a keen upward eye was Janirak, and that sad story has been quite definitively ended.]

And yourself?

[fingerstripes]

Believe it or not I kinda get that.

[ Though he's betting the context is different. Still, it's a strange feeling, seeing that longing reflected in someone else. A constant restlessness under his skin. ]

So when you say home you mean... [ He mimics her gesture, pointing towards the sky. ]

[greyjane]

[A bit of a laugh.]

Well. Technically, everyone currently enjoying Riverview's hospitality not born of its peoples are from [she jerks her thumb upwards in lieu of saying up there again. These stars are not her stars, but she has faith they're out there somewhere. They're all aliens here.]

But in keeping to the spirit of your question, yes. I've lived in space more of my life than not at this point.

[There's no bitterness or anger in the saying of it now. Had Nightwing met her a decade ago, there would be nothing but.]

[fingerstripes]

Wow.

I spent some time up there when I was younger. [ ~younger~ as relative to a twenty-there year old. ] There's something there you can't really get out of a jump line.

[ He lifts one shoulder in a small, almost apologetic shrug. ]

I probably didn't appreciate it as much as I would now.