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

[ The kid had already caught his attention, what with the scary good aim and the crawling around, but the expression tells him more than anything else. It takes him a moment to place it, but he gets it. Scandinavian or Norwegian, he's not sure of how old but considering the boy's age, the knife, and the drinking, his best guess is viking. ]

Sure, thank you.

[ He smiles before walking over, careful not to get in front of the knife's potential trajectory. He takes the beer before holding out a hand, getting close enough so Ivar doesn't have to move. ]

I'm Marcel.

Ivar Ragnarsson. Some call me Ivar The Boneless.

[Indeed, he's not just a Viking, but a famous one at that, or so he's gathered from those farther along in time than himself. He shakes Marcel's hand, his own rough and callused from a lifetime of crawling around on the ground. He clinks his beer against Marcel's before drinking. His eyes keep roving over the other man's skin color. There's only curiosity in his gaze. He'd never even seen anyone with such dark skin before coming here and he's yet to see anyone this up close.]

So, they stuck you in here. I'll tell you this much, you're on an interesting floor.

I've read about you. [ Which would be weirder for him to say if he hadn't been raised by thousand year-old vampires. ] You got an army yet?

[ The chronicles are very bad at pinpointing ages, so Marcel has no idea of how old Ivar and his siblings were when they went to war. ]

[Ivar sits up a little straighter at the mention that Marcel has heard of him. While on the surface he may be confident and tough, inside is a different story. It's gratifying that his name lives on long after he's dead and gone to Valhalla.]

The Great Heathen Army. At least that's what the English call us. My brothers and I are using it to take revenge for our father. [One king down and one to go. He was just itching to blood eagle another one. One thing the sagas had gotten right was that Ivar was very clever and very, very cruel.] All of England is going to be afraid by the time I'm done.

They will be.

[ It's a long war, though. It's been a while since he read about it, but he remembers it having lasted years.

He glances at the knife. ]

Can I give it a shot?

That's gratifying to hear.

[If Ivar gets his way, he's going to raid England until either his army's decimated or there's nothing left of the country but a bloody, burning smear upon the horizon.]

Sure. [He flips the knife over in one smooth movement, offering the handle to Marcel. He's curious to see what the other man can do, considering there are few here who seem to be capable with weapons the way he is.]

[ He takes the knife and tosses it to the target, there's nothing particularly remarkable about his aim (he hits the target, but not the center) but if Ivar is paying attention, he'll notice Marcel barely has to make an effort to toss the knife, and it ends up buried pretty deep. ]

Not bad.

[Ivar slides off the bed again and makes his way over to the target. He's the observant sort and always has been, a skill cultivated by a lifetime of being slower than other people. He notices how deep the knife went with such little effort. Marcel is stronger than he looks. Ivar yanks the knife out and puts it back in his vest.]

Where did you get pulled from?

[ Once it's obvious Ivar is gonna pick up the knife, Marcel makes absolutely no effort to help. He has no idea of how people usually behave around Ivar or what he expects, but if Marcel had been bound to a wheelchair since birth he sure as hell wouldn't want any help. ]

Few centuries after you, from America. If you have a modern map I can point out the place for you.

[It's a good thing Marcel says nothing. Ivar is awfully prickly regarding what people think of him. The chip on his shoulder can easily morph into anger if he thinks someone thinks of him as being lesser or viewing him with pity. All he wants is to be seen as an equal to everyone else, regarded as a Viking warrior that could fight the same as anyone. He's able to get around just the same, even if it takes him a little while longer.]

I've heard mention of the place. Hold on. I think there's an map book somewhere around here.

[He makes his way over to a coffee table by the entertainment center and selects an atlas from the small stack of books. He brings it back over to the bed.]

[ Once Ivar brings the book over, Marcel takes it and finds maps of America. He points out New Orleans specifically, since he doubts a viking would be satisfied with just the continent. ]

I was born here about a thousand years after your time. It's been two hundred years since.

[ Casually revealing immortality is always the way to go. ]

[This is the first time he's seen a good map of America and he's amazed by how big the continent is. It looks like it would be prime land for Vikings back home. They'd find a way to make it across the ocean. They always did.

He glances over at Marcel with an expression of surprise. He only knows one type that has a lifespan like that, which leads to his next question.]

Are you a god?

[He's already got one living on his floor, so hey, why not another?]

introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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