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

Roy Greenhilt | OTA

[greatcleavage]

Most of this festival held little interest for Roy; he had no particular desire to dance, or go to these raves that seemed basically like begging for an alignment shift to Chaotic just for stepping in the door. Not that he was judging, but Roy knew his limits and his nature.

But this whole festival did have one upside: the picnic itself, which was delightful in every way Roy could ask for. The fighter was delighted to stroll about the park, watch the dances, and listen to the music with an unusually cheerful smile on his face.

One might be inclined to noticed that he was still wearing his armor, and still had a massive greatsword strapped to his back, despite all this cheer and general peace.

A little while later Roy wandered about the park with a bag stuffed practically to overflowing with pastries and candy -- which he seemed quite willing to distribute. Catch notice of that bag and he'll offer one of the confections to you with a smile. "Help yourself!"

[trashmammal]

Now, Mae's not ordinarily the type to take candy from strangers, especially ones that just walked out of a ren faire, but she is hungry and desperate and that's more than enough. She leans in and grabs a great big fistful of treats from the bag, already unwrapping one and popping it into her mouth while she talks.

"So you know this is like, incredibly suspicious, right?" The irony of this doesn't seem to get to her. "Just hugely weird and bad."

[greatcleavage]

"Oh yes, I absolutely had time to taint or mess with these goodies in a way that caused no change to them whatsoever, in the seven minutes since I purchased them, and I will surely get away with it because no one will be able to describe my multiple distinctive features to the authorities."

Roy was at least perfectly willing to take the accusation in good humor, although he might have been less inclined to do so had Mae not been blatantly availing herself of his generosity.

"You weren't here for the last 'festival', where everything was designed to be shared. The town's big on getting people to know each other."

[trashmammal]

"Man I don't even know what you could've done to these. There could be hella razor blades in here and I'd never know!" She says only semi-jokingly. Someone's absorbed a whole lot of Halloween-time fearmongering, even though that has literally never stopped her from taking free goodies.

Mae nods absentmindedly, rolling the hard candy around in her mouth. "Is it really just parties 24/7 here? Wouldn't that get kinda... stale?"

[greatcleavage]

"Around here you'd have to worry about drugs or love potion more. Not from me, by the way." Just because he already had a sense that if he didn't qualify that, she'd pounce on the opportunity.

Of course, having said that, now he expected she'd pounce on him for protesting too much. He's already made a couple of guesses about how she is, based on their conversation thus far.

"Not quite that frequent, but this is the second major celebration since I arrived here. I believe they have an agenda in it."

[trashmammal]

Okay that's... concerning, in a way that Mae isn't really used to. Like yeah, drugs in candy is a pretty standard menace, but she's seen just enough bad teen romances to know that love potions are skeezy as all get out. It is pretty on-brand for Riverview, though, so she's not gonna make a big deal about it.

"They're just trying to get everybody to relax, right? Everyone's super freaked out about being here so they throw these big parties with lots of free food and hope we shut up." By her tone, Roy can probably tell that it doesn't seem to be working on her.

[greatcleavage]

"Well, I suspect their long-term is..." Roy coughed into one hand a bit awkwardly. "Repopulation, if you get my drift, considering these festivals seem to promote socialization. This one is at least a little more subtle than the last."

Roy had not been to any of the raves, or else he might have felt the whole 'everything is for a couple' setup of the last one had been a comparative masterpiece of subtlety.