riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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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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[He gestures for her to take a seat. Provided she does, his next query is tangential:]

Would you like a cup of tea?

[For in speaking of rebukes, Miranda would find his manners terribly remiss if he failed in offering her some touch of hospitality. He reaches for her still, in dark moments. Sometimes he imagines she and Thomas are the only light he has left.]

And, ah. I came with the first of the [his mouth quirks, he obviously finds some dry humour in the word--] castaways.

[ she does, but when he offers tea, her lips tighten for just a moment before twisting into a grin that's at least somewhat self-deprecating. ] If there's no coffee. [ his manners are clearly better than hers. given that this is a shared living space (and that is something lois will need to get used to again after years of living on her own), there isn't much reason for hospitality as far as she's concerned. ]

So you've been here a while. [ an almost idle statement of fact. her follow-up is much less idle, though: ] Would you mind answering some questions for me? I'm trying to figure out this place.

Coffee it is.

[It's not his first choice as far as hot drinks go, but he doesn't dislike it. Thomas spent more time in Penny Universities than he did, eschewing his station in life in exchange for the stimulating conversation that came about with the gathering of intellectuals of the age, but James had simpler tastes than the imported Turkish brew. He inherited his mother's taste in teas and his grandfather's in alcohol.

He gives her a nod as he heads for the kitchen. The room itself is not so far removed from the area he'd been seated, and has a large open window meant, he's certain, to facilitate conversation between the two separate spaces so he maintains it as he sets about manning the coffee machine,]

Not the least. Ask your questions, though I reserve the right to refuse them.

Edited 2017-04-05 20:29 (UTC)

You don't know it, but you may be saving my life with that coffee.

[ it's mostly a joke, but lois is willing to admit that she's built up a dependency on caffeine that isn't entirely healthy anymore and hasn't been for a long time. between late nights, the occasional long distance flight and chasing stories, coffee has been a godsent.

she'd prefer to be standing while he is, but he's only just asked her to sit and so she remains seated, crossing her legs. she's in a pencil skirt, blouse and waistcoat, high heeled boots at her feet. from somewhere (the tote she'd been carrying), she's procured a notebook and a pencil. ]

That's always a given. What did they tell you why you were here, when you first arrived?

[He makes a soft hm that might pass as amusement in another life, and once he's set up the ground beans in the filter, he stands back to let the contraption work. Technology is not as daunting as those from later ages would assume. He is from a time when men tackle the unknown with nothing between them and a watery grave but a few hundred tonnes of wood.

James leans hipshot against the counter while the building pressure of boiling water hisses behind and to his left. He folds his arms, lifting his right hand to thoughtfully smooth his beard.]

Nothing out of the ordinary, by whatever yardstick that may be here. I was given their stock orientation. Brought here. In the intervening time I've had no contact with the city officials.

[He asked few questions. He prefers to elucidate situations in other ways. When people ask questions, they tend to give away what matters most to them in very short order, and James has always played those cards closest to his chest.]

[ there are interviewing techniques, differences between leading questions and ones that don't do that. lois isn't bad at interviews, though she prefers to substantiate the information by other evidence. hear-say is, ultimately, no real use to anyone. most of the time, she doesn't mind giving away what's important to her. those are generally the things she stands behind. ]

Have you tried to go back home?

No.

[Home is a history he cannot hold. Nassau has Long John Silver now. Flint can rest. And if Eleanor or Woodes Rogers have him killed on the morrow upon his return, he will have earned the grave in myriad ways that speak to the soul of him. He does not fear death, nor clamour for its delay.

The coffee machine beeps behind him. He turns back to it, pours out two cups and sets that and all the accompaniments for which one could want on a tray to take back out into the living area.]

There's much I'm interested in learning here. When my appetite is satiated, perhaps then I'll negotiate my return.

[His tone is mild, but there is no escaping that he speaks in absolutes. As if this entire sojourn is merely an inconvenience put to him as a test, rather than a significant upheaval of his life. And even considering a monstrous power that can pluck a man from time and space untold, he does not seem to concern himself with whether or not it will allow his leaving.

He holds out the tray for her to select a cup, and then sets it down on the coffee table between them as he reclaims his seat. The book is gently nudged aside to make room.]

[ "why?" lois almost asks, the question on the tip of her tongue, but he elaborates a moment later and while his tone is mild, there's still steel underneath it, the same unyielding thing that lurked in his handshake. that kind of strength can be an incredible asset, or a wall to run against time and again. lois hopes he won't be an obstacle she has to overcome. ]

Do you enjoy it here? [ she asks instead, after thanking him for the coffee, taking a sip of it almost immediately. if he continues to be as observant as he has been, he might not miss the moment of bliss crossing her features. ]

I don't dislike it.

[It's an evasion rather than an answer. He is hard-pressed, strictly speaking, to enjoy much of anything. But his time here has not been unpleasant. The future is a creature that lives and breathes his bafflement at times, but the learning curve has not been so steep he has found himself sundered by it.

Yet, the centuries that follow his hold only intrigue for him. He is a man of vision, forever with an eye to the horizon. The Americas are not ruled by a king. Slavery as he knows it exists in crass pockets the world over rather than in open, casual defiance of the human condition. London - fucking London still stands, and her tyranny has echoed across centuries, but all her glorious aristocracy are by all accounts a fading power. He would have razed her to the ground and pissed on the smouldering ashes without much ado, but on a long enough timeline, each nation of men returns to dust.

He takes his coffee black, curls a hand around the cup. He is not a man to savour warmth, yet he seems to for a moment, gaze arrested by the oilslick surface.

Hm.]

It would be of benefit to you, perhaps, were I to give some perspective as to why that may be. I am late of Nassau, in the year 1717. Comparatively, this place is-- [an ironic upward twist of his mouth, it all but gives lie to the word that follows,] paradise.

[Which is not to speak badly of the city he has bled for, may well die for. Nassau means more to him than all the gold of all the world's kings. But only a fool would look at the amenities of a place like Quarantine and find them lacking, when compared to Nassau. It is a different class of place. Running water alone is of itself an unassailable luxury he'd never thought or dared dream of.]

Ah. [ it's a noise of acknowledgement because that does put some things into perspective, it explains something—but at the same time, even with the comparable luxuries of the modern day and age that lois often takes for granted until she finds herself in a corner of the world and a situation in which she doesn't have access to them, she can't help but wonder: ]

You wouldn't prefer being home?

[ but that isn't really the kind of question that's important to her quest to finding out more about this place, it's borne rather from an interest in people and their stories than in the truth behind this city. and so she doesn't wait for an answer before continuing, waving the question aside with a vague gesture, for him to ignore it as he likes. ]

Have you been outside the city limits?

[He appreciates that she seems willing to side-step around her own question, but it does not trouble him to speak on the matter. Home is an ethereal thing to a man that's spent more of his life on the swaying deck of a roiling sea than anywhere earthly.]

How does one define 'home', Ms. Lane?

[Her answer will define her equally as much. James Flint has made a life of knowing people. How to push them, and how far. How to bend them to his will. How to fetter them with lies and promises in equal measure to a horizon only he can see. To the next--]

I have. On numerous occasions. What observations would you have me regale you with?

[ lois tips her head to the side in quiet consideration. it's a good question, more philosophical than she would have expected. ]

I don't know how one defines it, just how I would. [ she points out after a moment. ] Somewhere I feel comfortable, where I can relax. [ "let myself relax", she almost said, but there are limits to what she's willing to give away. ] Oh, and it's got to have a bathtub. [ that's mostly a joke. or is it? ]

I'm mostly interested in what's out there. I haven't been myself, yet.

[James missed his calling as a second century Stoicist, all things considered. He has always had a philosophical bent. Meeting Thomas only made it worse. But he supposes her answer is as good a one as any soul can have.]

Mm.

[He stands with purpose (but then, every move he makes seems calculated and exacting somehow) and goes to his footlocker. He returns after a moment with a small leatherbound journal.

He keeps two. This is the one he expects will be found and read by others, sanitized thusly and largely harmless. The second of them is the one he has entertained only his private thoughts on this place. He proffers the book to her without ceremony.]

Keep it a while. Read what you like. [His penmanship is beautifully legible even by the highest educated standards of the age. Calligraphic and as precise as the rest of him.] It should answer some of those questions, at least.

[ it might be a sanitised version of his journal, but lois hardly knows that and even if she did: it's still a show of faith and trust, one that she appreciates. so she stands as well to take it, both hands wrapping around the leather. ]

I'll take good care of it. [ it's a promise she means. ]

I'd offer to answer any questions you have about modern technology, but you seem to have it well enough in hand — and I'm not the most technologically adept person. [ she's far from hopeless, but she calls it more often than not to deal with computer problems, so really, she can't consider herself an expert. ]

[That gets a laugh, slight and soft, as he takes his seat again, reclaims his cup of coffee.]

I'll confess, the learning curve was somewhat steep the first few days I was here. But technological advances are built largely with human intuition in mind, so I found that even a rudimentary familiarity lent itself to functional knowledge inside a matter of hours.

[He tips his head to one side. After a moment:]

Though perhaps you could tell me of the moon landing.

[He's read about it. As a concept, it barely feels real. People in his time generally assumed that atmosphere went on forever, that one could have breathed just as easily on the moon as on Earth. Flint - ever the skepticist - maintained a healthy distrust for that theory. He's glad to learn that the particulars have been proven in the future.]

That's good.

[ it's his laugh as much as his words that prompt a smile from lois as well, warm enough to cross the line from politeness to real friendliness. he seems to have a good head on his shoulders, a clear grasp of who he is and what's important to him. lois respects that. ]

I can tell you about the moon landing in my world. No guarantee it was the same for other people from other places, I guess. [ she doesn't have this whole multiverse thing figured out perfectly yet, but she's getting there. this much, at least, is easy to grasp. ]

I could ask for nothing more.

[Her honesty is refreshing and in many ways appreciated. James has been subsumed by double-dealing for so long that he's all but forgotten how to engage with people when there is no subterfuge at work. Being able to sit with someone and have a discussion that is wholly honest and wholly uncomplicated is a balm upon his soul.]

[ lois has dealt with her fair share of double-crossing and dishonest individuals, but as far as she's concerned, the truth has value in and of itself. she's not interested in lying to anyone. ]

In that case —

[ she takes a sip of her coffee. ] The first moon landing was in 1969. Three astronauts flew Apollo 11 to the moon, one of them remained in orbit while two piloted a moon landing module down. Neil Armstrong was the first man to ever set foot on the moon.

[He has been the first man to set foot on uncharted isles, to make landing in exotic locales. He has been a king in the New World. Still, he cannot fathom what it would be, to be the first to leave footprints on a place where, in its entirety, men have never touched.

His expression is wistful, mired entirely in the consideration of such a thing.]

How did the world react?

Most of the world viewed it as one of mankind's greatest achievements.

[ lois smiles a little, her own expression carrying none of his wistfulness. she isn't an explorer in this way; what she seeks to explore is the truth, not new and uncharted places. ]

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introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

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