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

[fingerstripes]

[ He effects a thoughtful expression, tapping his chin. ]

Hm. Rough on the hands. And it gets repetitive when the other guy misses his stage mark.

...So, do I get to ask one? [ He's enjoying this game. ]

[dust_of_life]

[She tilts her head to one side.]

A question? Sure, why not?

I don't think I'm the most interesting thing on this rooftop right now, though.

[fingerstripes]

Heh. That probably depends on your perspective. [ And there's a pause. ]

What's the deal with the wooden stake?

[dust_of_life]

[She reaches back to touch the stake in her hair absently. Quite the contrast to running into that Buffy girl.]

Would you believe I'm pitching a tent?

[Of course not. It's a ridiculous notion. And he may dress stupidly, but he clearly isn't.

Fatima shrugs.]

A girl's gotta defend herself when she goes out alone at night. Especially in a strange place.

[fingerstripes]

Well, sure. No argument there. [ She doesn't strike him as the shrinking violet type. But then again, maybe there's a good reason for that.

He glances at her sideways, considering. ]

But I can think of about a dozen options better than wood if it's protection you're after.

[dust_of_life]

[She gives him a delighted look and a little laugh.]

You'd be surprised what this sucker can do. Breaks skin just as easily as metal. Lighter, more versatile. Doesn't get you in trouble with metal detectors.

[And she tries the pass off the next part as a joke.]

Scares away vampires too.

[fingerstripes]

[ Joke or not, he nods as if this is a reasonable concern. He tilts his head a little, scrutinizing. ]

You get that a lot where you're from?

[dust_of_life]

I'm from Los Angeles. Not exactly the happiest place on earth.

Even Disney Land has muggers.

[She's only half kidding.

Fatima shrugs, breaking a piece off of her breadstick.]

I'm not a statistic.

[fingerstripes]

Well, sure. If we're talking about Los Angeles. [ Only he's not sure that's really what they're talking about.

He might as well just ask. ]

You really have to worry about vampires?

[dust_of_life]

[Masquerade breach, Masquerade breach, Masquerade breach, Masquerade breach, Masquerade breach...

Fatima's skin is thrumming with the words. Like some kind of warning klaxon.

But then, what does she have to lose? She's talking to a luchador on a roof.]

What if...I said I did?

[fingerstripes]

...I'd say I've run across killer robots, the gods of Olympus, and people from about ten different planets. [ There's a small smirk tugging at the side of his mouth. ]

I don't know that I'd find vampires all that hard to take.

[dust_of_life]

[That elicits an open-mouthed laugh from Fatima. Back home, she'd call him Looney Tunes ten times over. But after everything she's seen here, everything she's heard and met and been through...she can kind of believe it.

So, essentially, she'd be calling herself Looney Tunes, back home.]

Let's put a pin in the robots, because I want to get back to that.

But...maybe vampires are kinda a thing. Where I come from.

[fingerstripes]

[ He nods again, without judgement. ]

So you're saying the stake thing's not exactly a hypothetical.

[dust_of_life]

[She nods slightly.]

A wooden stake doesn't...kill a vampire.

[As if to say, "No, I'm not a murderer," even though she's done her fair share of killing, over the years.]

But it slows them down. Big time.

[fingerstripes]

[ He takes a moment to contemplate that. More to contemplate whether taking the life of the undead should be considered killing by Batmanly codes of honor. Are her vampires even undead?

To Fatima he says: ]

They go on the offensive?

[dust_of_life]

Sure. Sometimes. Vampire's gotta eat. And the rest of us are kinda on the menu.

[Admittedly, most of them don't actually kill their prey. But there are very, very few who ask permission. It's a complicated little fine line. And she has a lot of personal opinions about that.]

[fingerstripes]

You worried you're gonna run across a different breed out here?

[ He says it contemplatively, not at all mockingly. ]

[dust_of_life]

If I can run into a guy in long underwear, sitting up on a roof eating pizza, the odds don't seem entirely crazy, do they?

[She shrugs.]

And I'm not the only vampire hunter here.

[fingerstripes]

Of course you're not. [ He rubs at the edge of his mask. It's a tired gesture. ]

I'll be honest, I'm not sure which side of the war I should be turning a blind eye to.

[ The monsters supposedly hunting down innocent people for food, or the hunters supposedly hunting down an entire species in need of sustenance. There has to be another way. ]

[dust_of_life]

[There's something funny about a guy in a mask talking about being honest. It makes the corners of her mouth twitch.]

It's not a war. Wars are broad and sweeping. Wars are genocide. This is more of a case-by-case situation.

[Another shrug.]

I'm not gonna take out a vamp who's walking out of a butcher shop with a bag of paid-for blood.

[That's the old Fatima, anyway. The new, improved person actually uses her brain. Sometimes.]