riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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!

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's a long story. It's all kind of up in the air right now. And there's a big difference between acknowledge and endorse.

[He sits across from him, a little surprised when nobody seems to look their way.]

The mask game a bit more hush hush where you come from?

It kind of depends. [ On a lot of things he could probably spend all night explaining. ]

The police are hamstrung in a city where the corruption starts at the top. But on most days they're happy to pretend there's no masked man in footy pajamas zip tying the super trash to their lamp posts.

Sounds familiar. [Evil tends to worm its way uphill, that much Bucky knows. Even trustworthy organizations can have spies, moles, trying to turn the tides for ill.] Makes their job easier, I'd imagine. You guys got metahumans and the like, too?

Yeah. Though supercime's pretty far from being the only problem. [ And his brow furrows for a moment. ]

...It's funny, but I haven't actually run into a lot of people here who really get the costume thing.

Didn't think I'd run into any costumes I didn't recognize. [He counters, shrugging one shoulder briefly.] Most of the guys I know who do the superhero thing just joined the Perimeter Guard.

You don't worry about that pinning all of you down? [ There's genuine curiosity in his tone rather than judgement. He helps out on the guard on the odd weekend, but there's a reason he'd stuck with the police as the full time gig. ]

Tough to build a cohesive strategy when everybody has their own secrets to keep.

Nah. People keep their secrets, but maybe not as closely, and less so from each other. [Bucky did, back home, to an extent - but only because he has a past full of demons that would keep him from getting his job done. Others don't separate their superhero and personal identities.] Mostly they just want to do some good. The Guard's a good way to go about it.

Yeah. I can see that.

[ And he makes a mental note to stop by more often. Good allies are worth their weight in gold, and he's going to needs a lot more of them if he's ever finding a way out of this place. ]

I used to run with a team back home. Sort of a big crowd of heavy hitters, I guess. We worked out of Manhattan.

[ He's says it with deep fondness; they're his family as much as they're coworkers, and he misses them. ]

[A big crowd of heavy-hitters, boy doesn't that sound familiar. Bucky laughs quietly.] We've got a lot in common. New York City seems like a popular place for big teams of heavy-hitters.

My current team was out of Brooklyn. The Avengers. I kind of inherited them when I inherited this name.

Wow. [ It's not the first time he'd heard the name in this place, though this is the first self-identifying member he's met directly.

The world of difference there only makes the sameness sharper, somehow. His eyes sparkle even behind the mask. ]

So you're the strategy man? Field leader?

[It's kind of nice to be chatting with someone else in the business, from a whole other Earth. It's good to know that other people out there are saving other worlds.]

Not really. Once in a while. It depends what's going on. [Mostly he tells those freeloaders to pick up their beer cans and they don't listen.] What about you?

Yeah. I've been running the Titans since I was twelve. [ There's probably no mistaking the soft look in his face, but for once, a million miles removed from everyone dear to him, he doesn't mind if it shows. ]

You work with the same crowd for that many years and you're not just a team anymore.

Twelve? [That's what he gets stuck on. Bucky knows he started early but even he was sixteen before the brass put him out on the field to run around with superhumans.] What got you into this life so young?

[ He was the first and the youngest, but far from the last. It's far from an ideal he'd recommend to a child with a chance at a normal life, but the insight from Cap is still a little surprising.]

Had a murderer to bring to justice. Couldn't be talked down, I guess.

So, wait- no one's done the kid sidekick thing where you're from?

[A murderer to bring to justice. It's at least an explanation that makes sense. It wasn't too long ago that Bucky had his own vendetta.]

Mm. You could say I was one of the first, way back. Hated the word 'sidekick', Cap and I were partners. But it didn't end well for me, and- never caught on with other heroes, I guess. I was still sixteen when I put on a mask, though they made me out to be younger in all the propaganda comics.

introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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