Zevalyn Ives
April 10, 2019 2:03 PM
A concerted act by Zevalyn Ives
Zevalyn’s fist year at Sonora had also been a concert year. It had been her first year as a witch, and she’d been two years behind her peers, the tallest first year by spades, and the whole thing was kind of a blur. The concert, specifically, was a blur, but so was that entire year in general.Mostly all she remembered about whole thing was the Dueling Club demonstration, and that one only because she’d been in it, so it was largely impressions of being terrified she’d mess up her spells in front of her parents (and everyone else, but mostly her parents), rather than any clear memory of what exactly the club had done as a whole.
Despite this hazy memory, she suspected the Aladren Concert act would more closely resemble what the Dueling club had done than anything most people thought of when they heard the phrase ‘concert act’ used, and hoped Sonora was still supporting this very loose definition of the term as she stopped by Professor Wright’s new Head of House office.
“Hi,” she said, as she entered once her knock was answered with an invitation inside. “I know we were supposed to turn these in before midterm, but Professor Tarnasay seemed really busy, and I didn’t want it to get lost in the transition.”
That was, in fact, all perfectly true, but the delay had equally as much to do with Zevalyn still making last minute changes to the plan and the script up to and through most of the break.
She handed a twenty page document (printed out in 10pt Times New Roman - double spaced) encased in a clear plastic protective report cover with a blue spine binding to her new Head of House. The first page was just a title page with “Aladren Concert Act” written on it in a large font size and, a few lines below that, the names of the three prefects, in order of appointment.
On the second page was a table of contents, advising the Aladren Head of House that it started with an overview of objectives, followed by a list of volunteers, and continued with a script. Finally, it ended with an appendix that cited her reference materials.
Because this was Aladren. And this act was supposed to represent them. So citing her references had been absolutely necessary. Because Aladren.
Once Professor Wright read the objective summary, he’d know that the Aladren act intended to educate the audience about what Aladren stood for, demonstrate some of the things they loved learning about, and wrap it all up in a skit about a pair of independent and strong willed students who were faced with a problem and who solved it using logic and applying the things they learned along the way.
Nobody had shown much interest for incorporating music into the act, so there was none included. They were just having a play about two kids who encountered other people demonstrating interesting things, with a narrator to provide additional information that the main characters either did not know or which could not easily be conveyed in dialogue.
Zevalyn was pretty pleased with the final product, which had been a collaborative effort between the three prefects and the ideas submitted by the rest of the House about neat things they wanted to be able to demonstrate to their parents, but which they were not yet old enough to be allowed to do at home.
Zevalyn smiled as the new Head of House accepted her offering. “And congratulations on your promotion, Professor. I’m glad they picked you for our Head of House.”
She thought he was the most obviously Aladren of the professor employed by Sonora, so it only seemed right that they got Professor Wright.
OOC: Assumptions made that collaboration went into the final product. I tried to extrapolate from the planning meeting what we were moving toward in an act.
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Zevalyn Ives
A concerted act
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Professor Wright
April 14, 2019 3:46 PM
Well done! by Professor Wright
The elusive quantity known as 'they' said that it was impossible to go home again. Perhaps, Charlotte thought, in some contexts that was true, but whoever 'they' were, she had to assume 'they' were not instructors at 'their' own old school or schools.Gray twirled his pen between his fingers, looking at that line and wondering if it really was necessary to redo the first paragraphs in this way, or if he was overly influenced by his surroundings at the moment and the novelty they still presented. Then there was a knock at the door and the pen twisted, smearing ink along the back of his hand.
"Come in," he called, dropping the pen and hastily arranging several more appropriate papers over his manuscript as the door opened. "Oh, hello, Miss Ives - what brings you by?" he asked.
Aladrens were, by definition, supposed to be smart. However, they were also notoriously strong of will. This (along with a staff lounge gossip session which had involved one of the headmaster's young Aladren relatives possibly trying to poison another student) made him somewhat wary about the approach of a prefect. A certain strain of stubbornness had carried him as far as he had gone in his old life, and had gotten him through the rough transition period into his new life - but it was also what had made him ignore it when other people objected to what he wrote, which was why he had ultimately ended up spending some time in a delicate financial situation before coming to teach here. If another student felt that way about the rules, and did so strongly enough that Zevalyn felt the need to bring the Head of House into it, that could be difficult....
Her presence, however, turned out to be something altogether undramatic. Or perhaps 'literally dramatic' would have been a better description of the situation. At the very least, she was visiting for something good - or at least it was good that Zevalyn had thought of it. Gray had been aware of the Concert, of course, but previously it had been of no real importance to him and his involvement in the preparations had been fairly minimal. Now, though, he was Head of Aladren and he was therefore now duty-bound to take some interest in one of the acts.
"Oh, yes," he said, in a tone of mild but unmistakable surprise, as he took the prospectus offered to him. "Very logical, waiting," he added as he began to flip through it, wondering how she had contrived to have the prospectus printed and smiling slightly upon discovering the reference section. "And thank you."
He flicked past the table of contents and to the objective. "I like this - that part about the characters using logic to solve the problem together," he added. Absent-mindedly, he removed his glasses and dropped them on his desk as though to take up his pen at once. He could and did write sitting up, with his glasses on and the paper flat on a desk, and he had grown more accustomed to and more skilled at it since he had become a teacher due to the necessity of being sneaky, but it had never been his preferred position for composition. On his own, he usually had his glasses off, and was generally lying down with a hardcover book for a desk held close to his nose. He glanced back up at Zevalyn, however, and beheld a vaguely human-shaped blur; this required him to think about who his companion was, which reminded him of his own position, and so he picked his glasses back up and put them back on - all this without pausing his comments on the prospectus. "I suppose we deserve some of it - some of this reputation," he admitted, "but it's - a good idea, showing that there's, there's a difference between strength of will and just - being stubborn for its own sake. It takes strength of will to admit, admit the logic even when it doesn't follow all of..." he waved a hand to dismiss all the rigmarole of emotional reactions. "The other options, if you ask me."
Which, he realized after a moment, she hadn't. "Forgive me - I wrote skits for a couple of concerts when I was a student here," he explained. Properly, those had been his first scripts. Those probably were why he had had his career. He could only remember them with affection. "But yes, well done. Let me know if there's anything you all need as you put it together."
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Professor Wright
Well done!
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