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

[naz]

When Eddie starts to open his meal, Caitlin finally actually looks at hers. She isn't a very picky eater, either, and so she had just grabbed the first thing she'd seen and hadn't really given it very much thought. Now she's noticing the design on the packaging and she gives a little smile, mostly to herself, because whoever designed it put a lot of work into making sure that it would be especially pretty. It's just not something she would've thought anyone would have put so much effort into for the sort of thing that gets thrown away after being opened.

It's weird to talk to Eddie about feelings, not because she thinks he would be insensitive or disinterested, because that isn't the case. It's mostly because she's used to either keeping her feelings mostly to herself or talking to Cisco about them and this feels foreign. Welcome, of course, but foreign. His attentiveness is impossible to miss and she gives him another small smile, this one slightly apologetic because she's noticed his unwillingness to allow her to brush away the topic at hand.

"Thank you, I appreciate that. And I will, I promise," she agrees easily enough. Then, she circles back to address his initial response. "I felt the same way, though, at first. I wasn't sure how to feel about this place. Ray made it easier, because he's...like, the sort of person that just finds a bright side to literally anything? So that helped ease me into it, knowing I wasn't completely alone and having someone with his personality to sort of boost me up a bit. I don't know if I've been able to do anywhere near as much for you as he was able to do for me, but I certainly hope I was able to do at least a fraction of the softening of the blow," she offers hopefully, tucking her hair behind her ears before picking at the meal, trying to decide where she wants to begin.

"Thanks for inviting me to this, by the way," she adds. "I know I already said so, but it means a lot. It'd be a shame to miss something this pretty because I hadn't been paying enough attention to know about it." There's a short pause then and Caitlin starts to eat, looking away from Eddie to take in the scenery for a moment before she looks back at him as she swallows her bite. "Because you're right...this is really beautiful."

[causational]

Once he's got the lid of the package off, Eddie surveys the meal. It looks like a half a sandwich with a variety of lunch meats and alien sprouts on pink-coloured bread, some sort of steamed bun that he supposes must be alright to eat cold since there's nowhere to heat meals at the picnic, sliced vegetables with a creamy dip, and a few cookies that are also coloured pink with bright red dots that look like chocolate chips or candies. It looks good, and he picks up the sandwich first, while he still pays attention to what Caitlin's saying.

And yeah, maybe it's a bit weird to talk to her about feelings, mostly because he's never really considered the idea of becoming closer to her because of Barry. But it's also because, back home, he'd always been emotionally open with only Iris, really, never had friendships close enough to really open up, and would've felt uncomfortable doing so with another woman, romantic intentions or not. Now, as painful as it might be, that second reason is no longer in the picture, and neither is the first, so instead of awkward or wrong, it feels good. Nice, to be able to initiate a real friendship with someone he knows as an acquaintance.

"I get that." he says, nodding as she explains that Ray had made it much easier for her to get used to being in this place, and he smiles when she expresses uncertainty about whether she's been able to help him out in the same way.

"And yes, Caitlin, of course you've helped. Just having someone familiar, from home, who was willing to check up on me and keep in contact has meant a lot. You always make me smile."

Offering her a little grin, he takes a bite of the sandwich as she moves past that to talking about the view - and he tilts his head back to look at it again. The sky is alien, with a broad slice of the planet they're orbiting in the sky, the trees swaying in the wind, petals fluttering down to land around them.

"It is. Beautiful, I mean. I don't know if it's because I died at home, or just being in a new place, but I've really started to notice beautiful things more. It's like...I need to take in all the good things around me, just in case. I hope that doesn't sound stupid."

[naz]

Admittedly, before Eddie died, Caitlin had been firmly lodged on Team Barry and hadn't really given Eddie much thought beyond knowing he was the person standing between her friend and the love of his life. In retrospect after Eddie's sacrifice and now, having gotten to know him a little, Caitlin feels more often that she'd missed out on a really great person, so she's glad that he's amenable to the idea of becoming friends. It's nice to have a familiar face here, even if his in particular had been initially jarring. She's well past that feeling.

It's a relief to know that she hasn't let him down and she's been able to reciprocate the relief she feels in having him around. She's willing to admit that she's been working a bit too hard and not being as social as she'd like because when Caitlin gets lost in her work, she gets lost in her work. But at least Eddie isn't feeling neglected by it; that makes her feel better.

"That doesn't sound stupid at all," she replies honestly, shaking her head and reaching out to give his arm a little squeeze before letting her hand fall away again. "I think that sounds normal. I wouldn't want to have to go through what you did, but I'd like to think that if I had, I would be able to focus on the beauty around me like you are, and not fall into a pit of existential despair. I think you're kind of inspiring, actually," she confesses almost sheepishly. "And I'm glad I know you, now. I think I was missing out, back home. I really do."

[causational]

If there's anyone who understands getting lost in work, it's Eddie. That tends to be what he does when he's feeling distressed, unbalanced, a little lost - he throws himself into his work, he loses himself in the investigation, the paperwork, all of it. The bustle of being at work surrounded by people while being simultaneously left alone, not bothered for emotional details that feel uncomfortable to share. So if Caitlin has been a little lost in her work, who is he to be bothered by it? He understands, uprooted and displaced as she is, needing a place that is solid and constant and something that can be tackled with logic, something that needs doing, is a need that can be filled.

His face softens a bit when she squeezes his arm and then says that what he's saying sounds normal - when she carries on into complimenting him, his cheeks go a bit pink and he ducks his head, shakes it.

"Come on. I think it's pretty normal to seek out the beauty in life after thinking you'll never see it again. And hey, who said I wasn't having an existential crisis? Because I really am."

It's said jokingly enough, he's smiling as he says it, but there's a certain undercurrent of sincerity to it too.

"And anyway, I agree. I think I was missing out back home too, by not having hung out with you more. This is good, you know? It's good to have someone important from home. Makes it a lot less lonely here."