riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: FLOWER FESTIVAL

Entry tags:

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

I. BLOSSOM PICNIC

[ When Líadan first sets her sights on the flower festival, her eyes couldn't get much wider. The concept of a festival is nothing new to her, but the sheer magnitude of the event with such a great number of people and such beauty in the sights and sounds is something the likes of which she hasn't quite experienced in her twenty-four winters. It's familiar in the loosest sense to the festivals held across the Isle celebrating the advent of spring, but it's different in every other way and she converges on it with enthusiasm.

It's only after she's thoroughly explored the stalls that she spreads her own wide blanket in the picnic area and sets to work filling a fair portion of that space with a variety of treats from the stalls. To say she's worked up an appetite would be an understatement and the portion sizes in most of the places she's come upon since arriving have left a lot to be desired for someone with an appetite like hers.

Claiming a seat atop the blanket, she draws the hood of her cloak back to reveal a head of braided hair and smooths her robes out, shifting a bit to adjust the dagger sheath at her side and the bow at her back for greater comfort. Browns and greens are her colors with a bit of yellow and black here and there, so she doesn't exactly clash given the myriad of natural colors around her, not that fashion is a big concern of hers at the moment. The realization of just how great the unoccupied space on the blanket is, though, and it makes her think as to certain missing persons. ]

Care to join me?

[ Should one happen to approach or be passing, the invitation is extended and with an Old Gaelic accent for those familiar. There's a bright smile to go with it and a flourish of her hand meant to suggest that she's very much willing to share the goodies she's collected. Sure, she could eat them all, but she'd rather eat in good company. ]

III. FLOWER FESTIVAL DANCING & SHOPS

[ Líadan is out and about with a spring in her step and a mind to put to use what she's learned from the lessons she's taken. She tends to gravitate toward any location where there's music to be heard, be it a club or community centers. She lingers in the streets between venues, soaking up the cultural music and dances with keen eyes and ears. Where allowed, she's more than happy to jump in and try it herself.

Bystanders should beware all the same. Unguarded hands are an invitation for dragging in... unless you happen to catch her when she's perusing the market stalls, looking at the floral patterned clothing curiously. Maybe a change of clothes is in order? She's certainly pondering it along with just how one might keep a dagger on them dressed in such revealing clothing. ]

V. HOUSING ;; COMMUNAL FLOOR 2 AND OTHERS

[ 'Home' has always been a funny word to Líadan. As a nomad growing up in the temporary settlements her people erected across the wilds of the Isle, it was never a single building, never a firm, stationary concept. It was fluid. It moved. It changed and she has always embraced that change to the point that her people's settling had -- no, continues to feel strange to her. She doesn't mind sharing. Sharing is something she's done since birth as the daughter of nomads. It's something she continues do on a number of levels despite their settling, but the idea of it -- of housing and 'home' being the same -- is one that crosses her mind in question as she crosses the threshold of the door and into new territory shared not by familiar faces, but new ones altogether.

It's not the same, but a lack of familiarity and comfort has never crushed her spirit. She'll greet any new face with a bright smile and an enthusiastic greeting as she sets about exploring the floor. Her first order of business in exploration is the kitchen, where she'll be depositing a small clutch of reptilian monster eggs and a vial of blood from the same in the giant ice box. Next is the toaster, which she will be experimenting with indefinitely. At least the water faucets are straight forward.

And then, there are those times when takes to wandering, curious as to how many floors the building has, its layout, and, of course, the people occupying the place. At some point, she might just get a little impatient with the elevator and take to scaling the inside of the shaft only to pull the doors open and step out as if this was perfectly normal behavior. ]

V.2. WILDCARD

If you'd like something else, either write a starter up or contact me and we can plot something out, in which case I don't mind starting at all if you'd like. Lí will pretty much be anywhere and everywhere you can imagine, including at the raves! If you'd like to go with prose, I'll match you.

Please don't break anything.

*Lola's attempting to look intimidating... she's pretty good at the withering gaze, but she's tiny, young, and the bright blue hair kinda undermines her intimidation. While the kitchen is for the floor, Lola does a lot of the cooking when she can. It's one of the things she can do, given she lacks the skills and abilities to really do anything. Like explore outside the quarantine.*

I guess you're staying in one of the empty beds?

[ Oh, Líadan knows that tone and gaze. She's had it from her elders, her peers, even from the young ones she entertains on any given day within the hold on occasion. She's never quite had it from one with bright blue hair, though. If that isn't something! It isn't quite enough to intimidate her, but it does tug a smile out of her and something of a chuckle for fond memories and a sliver of familiarity. She's not laughing at her, though, really. ]

I am. Líadan Ní Donnabháin, and you are...?

[ And she'll gently put the toaster down and turn the dial back to where it was. Lucky Lola caught her before she'd had time to start sticking things in it or taking it apart, one. Maybe she can explain what it is and what it's for? Riverview had seemed intent to grind to a halt when its constructs were threatened, after all. They're obviously important to the people here. ]

Lola Pacini. And, um... do you have a shorter name to use cause that's a mouthful and I'd fumble over half those syllables.

*Lola's linguistic abilities were put into Spanish by birth and Chinese due to school. Neither of which left her with a lot of use for the accents and sounds of Gaelic. Even if this place translated everything to common, trying to say names still fell onto the sounds ones mouth would make.*

I can walk you through all the things in the kitchen, but if you don't know what something is don't break it. Or set the kitchen on fire. We all kinda need this kitchen.

Líadan Ní Donnabháin | Original | OTA

Housing

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