An act that bodily commits a person to a
terrible conflict, through a transformative or unforgivable act that makes it impossible for the one who "eats red flowers" to back down from the conflict. Examples of red flowers
may include acts of violence, but could also include "Fighting Words", offensive speech that clearly and unambiguously expresses an intent to
fight.
It's an idiom from the foundational indie
game, Cave Story. Within Cave Story, Any mimiga (rabbit person) who
ate a local variety of red flowers would turn irreversibly into a violent monster. There was some implication that the warriors of the mimiga took highly diluted infusions of red flowers for strength, but
even they took great care not to go too far. A mimiga would only knowingly eat a red flower once they were ready to die fighting.
"There's no point in engaging with them. They've eaten the red flowers. (They've tweeted some really stupid and offensive things that they're not going to want to ever have to acknowledge they were
wrong about, so they wont, so we can't reconcile)"
"No Averill, don't shoot a partridge in the lord's private hunting grounds. If he finds out he'll deploy his
army and
try to evict us."
"Let him. We peasants are ready to revolt, and we'd win. I'm going to do it, Barclay, sooner or
later I'm going to eat the red flowers."
