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

[oniondaughter]

Ah. An apt name, I suppose.

[Maybe a bit uninspired, but... it's descriptive enough. She wants to ask what its purpose is, and why he's using it, but she also doesn't want to seem rude and invasive. Instead, she just subtly glances down at his legs through the slot in her helmet, before his question draws her eyes back up to his face.]

Oh, yes I have! Forgive me, I haven't even introduced myself! I am called Sieglinde of Catarina.

[She gestures at the ax on his back.]

There aren't many who carry weapons with them in this place. Am I right to assume that you are one of this realm's warriors?

[ragnarsson]

[His legs are thin, weak things with no muscular definition whatsoever. It's a sharp contrast to his upper body, which holds all of his strength. He fails to notice her observing him, the helmet blocking his view of her face.]

Ivar Ragnarsson. Sometimes called Ivar The Boneless.

[His accent blurs his R's together and draws out longer vowels.]

I am a warrior. My people are called Vikings. But I'm not from this world. I arrived here about a month ago.

[oniondaughter]

[It doesn't take Sieglinde long to piece together that he can't walk, given the appearance of his legs. Still, she gives him no pity - if that chair allows him to fight well enough to call himself a warrior, then she knows enough to treat him as such. To do any less would be an insult - at least, in her culture.]

Well met, Ivar Ragnarsson.

[She gives him a small, respectful nod before continuing.]

I must say, it's good to meet a fellow warrior in a place like this. It's strange how relaxed the people are in this place, considering what I've heard of the dangers beyond these walls; one would think they'd be more wary.

[Then again, she's standing in the middle of a festival, so it could be that she's just getting a skewed view of how things are. She really doesn't know anything about this place, beyond what was on the introductory video she was shown.]

[ragnarsson]

The monsters outside have tried to break through several times. They have something called electricity and it keeps the fences secure. [He's still not entirely sure on how light bulbs and the current guarding the fence all fit together, but hey, he's still in an adjustment period. He's a fighter, not a scholar.] When it fails to work, that's when they attack. It's been a welcome challenge for the Perimeter Guard to keep them out.

[He smiles at the thought of battle. Proving that he could be just as good as any other member of the Guard was a very big deal for the Viking warrior with the huge chip on his shoulder.]

[oniondaughter]

Ah, so we aren't exactly the first line of defense.

[Sieglinde isn't familiar with the term 'electricity' but she's seen lightning harnessed as a weapon before. Once she sees the fence in action, it won't take her long to figure out what exactly it was.]

In any case, I've been asked to join the forces of this city's guard until I might stay home. It isn't ideal, of course, but I will do what I can to keep this place safe from such dangers.

[Not that she doesn't enjoy a good battle or skirmish as much as the next knight, it's just that she's got other things she's supposed to be doing.]

[ragnarsson]

Then we shall be working together. I joined up when I arrived. I'm curious to see how well you can fight in that armor.

[It looked a bit odd, but Ivar knew better than to judge by appearances. The fact she was moving around in it at all meant she had to have some tremendous amount of strength. Put that behind a weapon and there was no doubt she could do some damage.]

[oniondaughter]

I promise not to disappoint, then.

[Bruh you don't know the half of it. There are knights in her order (her father included) who wield 6 foot long zweihanders with one hand, and swing them around with brutal force.

Their fighting style is one with some very obvious flaws - limited visibility and mobility, to name a few - but their armor allows them to take most blows that are dealt to them, and when they land a blow of their own it hits with a brutal amount of force.]

I must admit, I'm eager to watch you in battle as well. Your wheelchair must make for an interesting set of battle tactics.

[There's no irony in her voice whatsoever. Instead, it carries a tone of respectful curiosity.]

[ragnarsson]

[There's something of a challenge in Ivar's eyes. He'd like to watch her in battle, and more than that, he'd like to test his own mettle against her, for she seems like she'd be quite the opponent for him. He's stronger than he looks too, a lifetime of upper body muscles built from crawling around and training.]

I haven't tried to use it in battle yet. [There was too many variables for him to be comfortable doing much more than slaying the odd monster here or there while in it.]

For that, I have a chariot. [He'd gotten it from home about a week prior and couldn't be happier. It gave a boost to his self-confidence to know he could be just as much of a warrior here as he'd been back home.]

[oniondaughter]

[She nods at that, placing a hand where the chin would be on her armor.]

That makes sense.

[Of course the warrior who can't stand on his own legs would be a member of the calvary. It's an important role in combat, and perfect for someone like him, who clearly has the upper body strength to fight in such a position.]

I imagine you're quite the fearsome sight to come across like that. The knights in my order don't focus in mounted combat, but I've fought alongside soldiers that do. Its quite different than the sort of fighting I'm used to.

[ragnarsson]

[Being able to fight was all that had ever mattered to Ivar. His chariot was one of his most prized possessions. Without it, he would have been relegated to the sidelines.]

It's definitely better than trying to crawl around.

[He wouldn't have admitted that to just anyone. But she was a knight and would know the importance of being able to keep up on a battlefield.]