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!

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Comments

Letha Regis | OTA

[burntbridges]

blossom picnic

Having found a nice dress and put her hair up in an appropriately festive way (with a flower hairpin in to avoid losing her crow pin in the excitement), she has taken up the habit of just wanting around and sampling anything she finds interesting. She's discovered a dormant love for rose-petal ice cream, and unless she absolutely can't eat ice cream while doing something in particular she'll probably have one in her hand. This makes her a little extra giddy during the whole affair - she has yet to notice how strong an effect sugar has on her.

Still, despite that giddiness, she's very solemn when she actually sits down to watch the blossoms falling. Sitting under the trees and just watching them was something she's only ever really done with her husband, and having the opportunity to watch such pretty trees really makes her miss him. It almost makes her guilty that she gets to be in such a wonderful place without him.

dancing lessons

Here's the thing... Letha is a teenage girl. And like many teenage girls in many realities, when she has a crush on someone foreign it tends to spur her into learning about their culture. By some miracle there are others in the Quarantine that came from similar versions of Ivar's world, if not Kattegat exactly, which she tracks down both from their accents and general attitude and body language. One of the demonstrations she's seen even included a shirtless man doing acrobats with weapons is his hands, but she decided wisely that she's in no condition to learn anything like that. She is, however, going to learn all the easy dances.

Even without the schoolgirl crush, Letha's world has next to nothing as far as fun, exciting dances. In fact, they're probably more boring than whatever real regency-era England had to offer. She can be found participating in all sorts of dances (though she sticks mainly to those that require groups of 8 or more, being reluctant about dancing as a couple or on her own), and while she's not amazingly good at any of them, she's having fun. Even if she has to lie down a lot between lessons (and sometimes in the middle of them) as her unborn child helpfully throws off her weight just a bit, and makes her extra dizzy.

adult raves (cw: accidental drug use and general anxiety)

Well... okay, coming here was a bad idea, but Letha's curiosity has to lead her astray once in a while or she wouldn't learn. Toward the end of the festival she's finally succumb to the need for knowledge on what's so "18+" about these raves. And this has ended in her taking a few drinks, getting hit with a bit of that euphoric powder, getting SUPER EMBARRASSED over all the openly shown skin, and eventually crashing from her sugarhigh in a small corner of one of the raves where people are likely meant to sneak off and get naughty.

She's out of place and feels bad for bringing down the mood, but the strobe lights make it difficult for her to find her way out of the place and she's always been a little better controlled by her emotions than she'd like to be when she's sober. Even worse when she's tipsy and a little high and now aware that she should have at least come in with a friend.

roommates

So remember what I said about Letha not wanting to do couples dances? Well, she watched them performed anyway, even if she's nervous to do them with strangers. So anyone on floor 1 will get a little treat. Whenever she thinks no one is around, or at least no one who will judge her, she takes up practicing those two-person dances with her animated corpse. A lot of the time this ends with her placing her feet on the skeleton's and just making him do all the work, because her brain can process the dances better than her limbs can. So if you come home to see her slowdancing with a skeleton? Just... don't be surprised.

It should also be mentioned that if one speaks to her after this, she's going to smell like corpse. Just a little bit.

adult rave

[causational]

The rave is a big place, but Eddie's run into the girl a few times on the dance floor and around the place. She's pretty, looks slightly out of place, and like she's barely old enough to be in this place, so she sticks in his memory - an instinctive thing, picked up from years of being a cop. So when he sees her again as he's getting a bottled water from the bar, stumbling into one of the little dark hidey-holes tucked around, he immediately turns back to the bartender, holding up two fingers to indicate he wants another.

Taking the bottles, he heads over to where she's sitting, dressed in a pair of tight, torn-up jeans and a floral-print tank top, a couple of glowsticks wound around one wrist like bracelets. Leaning down to try to catch her eyes, he offers her a gentle smile, and holds out one of the water bottles, still sealed so she'll feel safe drinking it.

"Mind if I join you?"

[burntbridges]

She's spooked by the noise, but just enough to look up with a startled expression before taking the bottle offered and hanging her head in quiet defeat. This was such a poor choice, and she feels just a little bit worse now that someone's here to bear witness.

"Can't see why not."

She quickly tries to dry her eyes, still dizzy and sluggish as her body tries to cope with the rollercoaster of substances she's introduced to it tonight. Taako did his best to alert the bartenders not to serve her, but she managed to sneak a drink or two and neither of them were expecting the sugar and caffeine from soda to affect her as much as they did. Add that to the purple and blue handprints on her arms, from accidentally bumping into taggers, and the fact that she's already been dizzy from what she can only assume is her unborn baby throwing a tantrum in her belly... she's a mess. And there's absolutely no hiding it.

"...You're not going to ask me to participate, are you?"

[causational]

The moment he gets close enough to see her in the faint light from the glowsticks on his wrist, he can tell that she's been crying, her eyes wet and a little red. When she takes the bottle from him and says he can sit, he does so, sliding into the little space with her, close by but not crowding her.

Eddie himself is mostly sober - he has a few bright splashes of colour on his skin from playing tag, but it's long since inactive, just colour and no drug, and it's mostly worn off him now. This is how he manages nights like this, going hard for a bit and then letting himself cool down for a while, sober up before deciding if he wants to jump back in.

"You don't really look like you're in the mood to participate. You okay?"

Turning toward her a little, he lifts his own water bottle and presses it against his forehead, cooling his face down.

[burntbridges]

She hesitates, before uncapping the bottle and drinking it in tiny sips. Her stomach's been in a knot for a while, and the last thing she wants to do is complete the horror by losing her lunch.

"I've never been to an... event like this." She's speaking just loud enough to be heard over the music, muffled as it is by the private nature of the nook they're in. "I... have to admit I bit off more than I could chew."

And she hates to admit mistakes like this, but it's pretty obvious. There's no way that a pregnant teenager in a white floral circle dress fits into the mood here. And hell, she's still mortified that she's caught sight of people's privates while trying to find a private space that was actually unoccupied.

Having someone to talk to is very helpful, though. It almost makes the club seem survivable. "How does one get used to all this... noise? And the lights?"

[causational]

It is pretty obvious to Eddie that the girl has bitten off more than she can chew, but he's not so cruel as to call more attention to it, especially when she already looks more than a little embarrassed about the whole thing.

"Hey, it happens to everyone." he says, after a moment, his voice kind and encouraging, and he leans down to catch her eyes again, smiling at her warmly, "Believe me. One time when I was 19 years old, I got into a club with a fake ID. I had one drink before the bouncer realized the ID was fake and came after me. They caught me trying to climb out a window I didn't fit through in the club bathroom. Super embarrassing, especially because I was training to be a cop at the time."

Eddie smiles through the whole story, and shrugs, opens his bottle of water with a crack of the seal, and takes a long drink from it, glancing out at the dance floor and watching the lights dance against the powder floating in the air.

"Do you come from somewhere that doesn't have lights and music like this?"

[burntbridges]

She shakes her head lightly, "My world has yet to discover lightbulbs. We had chandeliers full of candles, oil lanterns and such. Our dances consisted of patterned walks, and we had violins and fortepianos for music, and..." Her voice drops a bit more, "I've never seen a man naked aside from my husband."

It feels so embarrassing to admit it, only partly because of the lingering knowledge of how many ranks she'd lose if anyone back home knew she had any more experience than was absolutely, strictly necessary. And that included sight.

"I died back home. This... feels a bit like that. Embarrassing, and sickening, and..." She hugs her knees a bit closer. "...Every day I lost a little bit more of myself, and I stopped understanding my surroundings. Everything became confusing, and strange, and I forgot my husband's face, and even what humans were meant to look like... And it all came back when I was out there. I suppose I just got. Caught up in the fear."

She's such a mistake. She couldn't even die properly. That's what she's been thinking since the moment she realized this night wasn't going well.

blossom picnic

[ragnarsson]

Ivar's temper has cooled down from the last time that they spoke. He was glad he hadn't killed her. Besides being terrible messy to deal with, he's rather fond of Letha in a way that makes him unsure of himself. She's different than most other girls, though he can't decide if that's because she's a necromancer or just her personality in general.

So he approaches her when she's watching the blossoms fall like they didn't get into a fight that ended with him threatening a pregnant woman with a knife the last time they met. Definitely not his finest moment. He wheels up to her, his chair already covered in blossoms, one of the green fruits that seem to be popular in his hands. "You look...colorful," he observes. As for himself, Ivar is dressed in his usual drab getup. He's not one for bright colors and he's definitely not about to show off any skin.

[burntbridges]

She'd told herself that she was still angry with Ivar and planning to ignore him, but... when she hears his voice it startles her, and- a bit more than that. She'd almost call it relief, that she hasn't lost him entirely. But if she admitted to that, she wouldn't be a Regis.

He's caught her at one of the rare times where she's not sugarhigh, but instead simply watching the blossoms and thinking. She's gotten several in her hair and on her lap by now, but she's just letting them stay where they land. Partly because it's kind of nice, and partly because she's given up on trying to keep them off of her when she's directly beneath a tree.

"It seemed appropriate for the occasion." She replies after a bit of a pause. She's willing to pretend nothing happened if he is... although there's a note of mistrust in her eyes. "You aren't planning to dress up, I gather."

[ragnarsson]

He wouldn't apologize. As far as Ivar was concerned, there was nothing to apologize for. He'd reacted in the only way he knew how when she'd done the worst thing possible and insulted the fact he couldn't walk. The fact she'd walked away alive was a testament to what little self-control he had. He shrugs at the mention of dressing in flowery colors, mouth twisting in disagreement. "If I dressed up, where would I put a knife?" Ever the practical one, Ivar is. One never knows where they'll need to stab someone, or more practically, get someone out of a jam by cutting a hard to undo knot.

"You can dress up for both of us." He picks up one of the flower petals that's fallen onto his shoulders and leans over, placing it behind Letha's left ear. It's a gentle gesture, something one wouldn't expect of such a violent man.

[burntbridges]

She can think of a couple of choice places for him to shove his knives, but the thought manages to escape her head at the feeling of his hand near her face. There are plenty of little flowers and petals in her hair but that one? That one's the best one.

Shut up, girly feelings.

Her first attempt to speak fails, so when she does manage her cheeks are flushed pink. "Bold of you to imply I dressed with you in mind."

[ragnarsson]

He's well aware of the effect such a gesture might have on Letha and he'd been hoping it might produce the exact reaction it has. He's a cruel man, but like most people, Ivar isn't made up simply of black and white. He likes Letha well enough, even if she does turn his blood to anger more often than he'd wish. So the gesture is heartfelt, if also a little manipulative.

"You said it. I didn't." He grins at her, that infuriating one that says she's been outsmarted once again.

[burntbridges]

And outsmarted she has been. Her face turns scarlet, and with a practiced motion she pulls her fan from her bag to cool herself down.

She's not looking at him anymore, but... she'll truck along with what she'd meant to tell him the next time they met. "I meant to- contact you earlier, but I didn't deem it appropriate given the... well. I wanted to know if... if you're still interested in finding a way to contact Valhalla."

She's going somewhere with this, she swears. In fact, she's been planning this conversation in her head since Sampremi, but her nerves are getting in the way and making her stutter.

Dance Lessons

[threatenwithcuteness]

Lola was moving from one lesson to the next just trying to learn things. No, not dancing, who goes to dance lessons for dancing? That's weird. No she's there to network, learn gossip, pick up information from this person or that. Constantly energetic and friendly, always making conversation. Okay, sure, she does dance in most of the dance classes. She's a very quick study at the physical. Turning her years of dance, cheerleading, and being Shay's personal sporting partner into following the steps of others.

Lola sits down next to Letha during one of the older girl's breaks and offers her a water bottle. "I'm really glad you didn't bring a dead dance partner, it'd make everyone here freak out."

Because Lola is tactful and diplomatic!

[burntbridges]

"I considered it." Letha takes the bottle gratefully, although she's been very careful never to break a sweat while dancing, "But after the reactions I got last time I tried to integrate my world with others, I thought it best to leave him at home."

Though, that isn't to say she hasn't been practicing with him. It's nice to have a dance partner whose mind is literally linked with yours.

"You're a good dancer," she comments after a moment; it hasn't been hard to spot Lola in the crowd, as usual. "I take it you had opportunities to learn in your world."

[threatenwithcuteness]

"Thank you," Lola was not nearly so concerned about not sweating, with a healthy glow to her showing she was putting her all into this. Her hair was up in the little pigtails she used to keep her hair from her face while she was athletic. She was glad to have the length, but remembered why she choose a pixie cut when she was a cheerleader. "Dance, and just keeping active and exercising. My best friend envied how quickly I could get the basics of something."

"You do okay, you don't seem to be really trying your hardest though. Is that because of the baby or something else?" Lola never fails to just ask the thing.

[burntbridges]

"Every time I strain myself lately I've gotten dizzy." She admits, although the main reason is that she doesn't consider it lady-like to sweat publicly. "Dizzier than I expected to be. But... I don't have much of a reference for what's normal."

It's definitely not normal, but at least the cause of the dizziness hasn't started affecting her outer appearance yet. It will sooner or later. Especially if she keeps doing reckless things like angering Vikings and drinking soda.

[threatenwithcuteness]

"I don't really know anything about pregnancy, sorry. But from when one of the older girls at my school was pregnant, she definitely stopped being too active." Clare wasn't really in Lola's circle, but she was the center of all the juicy gossip. Which is impressive for a girl that has no style and takes no care about her appearance. Lola didn't get it.

"But you're not even sweating, so it can't be from exertion."

[burntbridges]

"When I spoke to the doctors last they said I was fine... but I wonder if there might be something wrong they hadn't thought to check."

She's quiet for a moment, before letting out a quiet sigh. "I'm sure that's nothing you could help me with. I'd hate to interrupt your enjoyment of the festival with this sort of nonsense."

blossom picnic

[leadintheyoung]

A solemn face in a sea of smiles is the mark of a wandering, unhappy mind and the why of it sees Líadan unceremoniously take her leave of a group she'd joined some time ago. It's a good ten minutes later that she'll find that same, curious expression amidst the masses and drop to the ground beside the woman wearing it as surely as if she herself belonged at her side and was perhaps a bit later than intended. She lays a number of treats in front of them in offering and turns her eyes to Letha upon picking a macaroon out for herself.

The hood of her cloak is folded back, revealing a head of braided hair. Her robes and the dagger sheathed at her side speak of a younger culture and the greens and browns with the occasional hint of yellow and black about her apparel don't put her entirely out of place given the festival's myriad of colors. When she speaks, there's an accent, something like Old Gaelic if Letha is familiar. She offers her an easy smile that doesn't eschew her curiosity.

"You look to me like you're somewhere farther than near," she says, taking a bite of her chosen treat. "What's so heavy on your mind as to take you away from this beautiful place and time?"

[burntbridges]

While Letha isn't the most familiar with the accent, it reminds her of one of the grave-keepers in her old town. Though she'd never managed to get a straight answer from him about his origins, she knew Letus was Irish and she assumes the same of the woman who's come to join her.

Despite the modern style of dress she's taken on since coming here, her accent still betrays an earlier time period than the bulk of the volunteers; not as old as Liadan's, but old enough to be different from a modern English tongue.

"Watching the trees has always reminded me a bit too much of home." She replies solemnly, playing along for now with the idea that they know each other. "I'm suppose I'm simply waiting for something to take my mind away from it."

[leadintheyoung]

There's something very pleasant about Letha's accent. It's different than the majority of what Lí's heard in her time here. It isn't familiar per se, but she likes the sound of it despite the solemnity about her present company's words and tone. Taking a bite out of her macaroon, she turns her eyes around at the trees and the petals floating from their boughs for a moment, then looks back to her company as she swallows.

"You can happen to the world or the world can happen to you," she says. "I think the elders said something like that once. If it's nothing particular that you're waiting for, we could happen together, if you'd like. I'm Líadan, by the way. Líadan Ní Donnabháin."

With that, she'll cant her head forward in something closer to a more formal greeting. She has manners, honest!

[burntbridges]

Despite her best efforts to remain solemn and stoic, Li has gotten a small smirk out of her. She hasn't heard any mention of elders in over a month unless it came from her own mouth.

"My name is Letha Regis." She tips her head to watch the girl, as she finally reaches for one of those cookies she brought, "My elders would say it's better to let the world happen to you. The world is older and knows better what you need."

Though, her elders wouldn't approve of pretty much anything she's been up to since coming here... so she's kind of glad they don't have any input.

[leadintheyoung]

That smirk of Letha's is noticed and it sees the corners of Líadan's mouth tug a little wider and upward for it. That? That's a little better. Her current goal is to get a smile out of the other and get her spirits up. A festival like this is hardly the place to be overcome by solemn matters, after all.

"I suppose that could be just as exciting. Did you live in a village before you came here?" She asks, curiosity pressing her into a question that may hinder her efforts before she quite catches it.

Having come into a fondness for the things, she reaches for another macaroon herself.

[burntbridges]

"Something like that - my town was called Thornwell." She actually brightens up; she hasn't gotten a lot of curiosity about her hometown, and there's a note of patriotic pride she can't help but keep in her tone. "I was one of a large family of nobles governed by a council of elders. My grandmother was in charge of most everything in the town, so I was rather well off."

She's lying about being a noblewoman, but everyone in her family would. The only reason they're allowed to claim it is because no one wants to tell an entire family of necromancers who bury dead everywhere for easy access that they're wrong.

"And you? You look like you come from an older time than me."