Head of House speech, SA34 on Pecari Commons

Isis Carter-Xavier

December 14, 2019 6:24 AM

Head of House speech, SA34 by Isis Carter-Xavier

Things were better.

The last few years had been difficult for Isis. And while she wasn’t sure she would ever fully forgive herself for the early moments of her daughter’s life that she had lost, Isis was here now. She was here now, and things were better.

“Pecari first years! This way!” she shouted over the crowd, a Sonorus charm once again rendered unnecessary. She projected well enough on her own, although she helped the shouting didn’t bother the two year old she carried on her shoulders.

“Welcome to Sonora,” she smiled once she was fairly confident she’d gathered the entirety of her brood. “My name is Isis Carter-Xavier, and I’m your Head of House. You’ll also see me in class sporadically, as I function as the substitute teacher around here. And this is my daughter - she lives with me and my husband, Herbology professor and Teppenpaw Head of House, Professor Xavier, here at school. Now, if you’ll all follow me, we’ll be on our way to your dorm rooms.”

From the Cascade Hall, Isis led the first years into the Labyrinth Gardens. She wondered idly if they had passed by the entrance to their Common Room earlier, during their tour, before they even knew about it. Hopefully, if they had, the memory of the happenstance would help them remember the location. “Stick to me,” she said back to them. “And keep in mind that even if the Gardens seem a bit spooky at night, they are perfectly safe. Plus you don’t have to go too far.”

She stopped semi-abruptly beside a suit of armor. Gesturing toward it, she smiled. “This is the entrance to Pecari Common Room. Please keep in mind that its location is supposed to be kept secret from those who aren’t in your House, so don’t spread it around. If you happen to forget where it is or how to get into it, just find me or one of your Housemates, and we’ll help you get back in. This week, the password is Niffler nonsense.”

Immediately, the suit of armor sprang to life and leaped out of the way, revealing the path inside. As she had with the class before, she offered a half-merry, “After you,” to the student nearest her and let them enter in front of her. It was a good way to keep track of them, but it was unfortunate that she therefore couldn’t see their reactions to their new home. Pecari Common Room was tailored to its students. It was a warm place in both temperature and aesthetics, with plenty of comfortable seating, oak tables, and brown and gold decor strewn about. Physical heat was provided by the burning fire, set earlier by a prairie elf. “Welcome home!” Isis beamed.

“That way,” she continued a moment later, her voice returning to more of a tour guide style, “is the bulletin board. Be sure to check it often, because it will have the new password each week, as well as any announcements. Your House prefects are Brett Newell, Parker Fitzgerald, and Michael DiCaprio. The Head Students, Connor Priory and Ivy Brockert, are not in Pecari, but they are also excellent resources for help. If you need anything at all, you can go to any of those student leaders. Or me, of course; my office is right over there,” she added with a gesture in that direction, “if you need me. I’ll have a schedule of office hours posted on the door, but if you’re in trouble, I can always be found.”

Isis led the first years across the Common Room to the two identical stairways. “This way leads to the girls’ dormitories, and this way leads to the boys’. If you go down the wrong way, you’ll be re-deposited back out here in the Common Room. Curfew is ten o’clock PM; it’s up to you to go to sleep on time, but you have to be back to Pecari Commons before then. Otherwise, you will be locked out and will have to come to me to get back in.” She had never been very strict on timeliness, either in curfew or with class attendance, but she had gotten slightly more attentive to it since having (and really having) Theodora. “Does anyone have any questions? If not, you’re free to go explore your new home.”

OOC: Welcome to Pecari! You are now free to post on any board except other houses and the staff/prefect lounge. You may continue your threads at the feast as well as posting here. This does not mean your character is in two places at once, as we operate under fuzzy time, whereby the time passing in the real world is not the same as Sonora - so long as threads are set at different times and do not have an effect on each other, you can be in multiple threads at once. You are not obliged to reply to this post but may do so if your character had questions to ask. Enjoy!

Subthreads:

Why? by Theo Spurn

12 Isis Carter-Xavier Head of House speech, SA34 31 1 5

Theo Spurn

December 14, 2019 7:05 AM

Why? by Theo Spurn

At the end of the feast, Theo followed his new Head of House. The velvet dress lady wasn’t anyone’s head of house, so he was alright with going along with this other person instead, he supposed. He was intrigued by the small child. She was smaller than the smaller-than-Theo people in Theo’s life by quite a substantial amount but he suspected she was big enough to like blanket forts seeing as she… wasn’t a tiny thing with no motor control. She was like a real person, only small. His dad had tried to warn him that other kids his age might not be so enthusiastic about those, but it looked like there would be one person in his house he could share that interest with, so that was good. And then next year Stanley and Wally would be here, and then the year after that, Tommy would join them, and he would have lots of people to play with. Not that it was looking shaky at all on that front. He had made two friends at orientation after all.

He was not too distracted as they walked through the school and gardens because bushes were spiky and because he was keen to see his house-home. He followed Professor Carter-Xavier’s gesture to go inside and ooooooh. There were many, many new things to stroke. He wanted to touch the curtains the most. The curtains were big and drapey and ever so good. But if he started with the best thing in the room then other things might not be so exciting, so he started with one of the couches, just standing next to it and running his hands down the back of it. Luckily, this was either decently near where Professor Carter-Xavier had planned to deliver her speech or she was willing to adjust and be where he was because suddenly she was there and talking, and Theo was listening even though he was still stroking the couch.
He was supposed to check a bulletin board (he probably would forget), there were some odd staircase rules (he didn’t understand the point of them), and he had to be here by ten (his bedtime was 9.30, and that was on his watch, which dad had divided up into sections like ‘breakfast,’ ‘class’ and ‘homework’ so that shouldn’t be a problem).

“Why can’t we go up the other staircase?” he asked, when she opened the floor for questions. “And who are my roommates?”

13 Theo Spurn Why? 1476 0 5

Leonor De Matteo

December 15, 2019 11:34 PM

Asking the real questions. by Leonor De Matteo

Leonor was pretty excited about the diversity at Sonora so far. On the one hand, diversity in her life was when Jessica came to visit and there was precisely one white girl in Cuidad de Matteo. That being said, she had not expected that to be the case at Sonora. There were several students of color scattered among those sitting at the feast, as well as those who were white-passing but spoke languages other than English as natively or better than English. Then there was Professor Freaking Carter-Xavier. Leonor felt a little spoiled that they got this absolute queen for Head of House in Pecari. Felipe had Professor Skies, who was also cool, but was she an awesome working mom, substitute at literally anything, and beautiful, fierce woman of color? No she was not. These things were important for developing young girls, and Leonor sure as heck planned to develop over the next seven years.

The group of first years to Pecari was small, but that was the case for all of the Houses, and it was sort of a nice transition for Leonor after having had mostly private education before Sonora. That being said, she had some really weird Housemates in her year. First of all, Mab was terrifying; it was great. Secondly, Theo was straightforward; it was great. Really weird was exactly where Leonor wanted to be, and she suspected this was going to be a great seven years.

When they made their way to the Pecari Common Room, Leonor couldn't help smiling. While she was certainly used to finery, there was something relaxing about the earthy vibrancy of Pecari that just screamed of life. It was not the sort of life that agriculture spoke to or that Felipe would have been excited about, but the sort of life that ebbs and flows with the people who are existing in that space. It was beautiful.

And apparently had some great couches? Theo was rubbing the couch while Professor Carter-Xavier spoke, and Leonor wondered what it felt like. There must have been a good reason to rub it, right? Moving surreptitiously to stand beside Theo, she copied his motion. It was actually a pretty cool couch. Plus Theo seemed like it wasn't distracting for him, which was great. In fact, he seemed to be thinking a bunch, because he immediately had questions.

Eh, or he wasn't really listening maybe? Leonor supposed that his questions weren't directly answered in Professor Carter-Xavier's spiel already, but they sort of were. Maybe he just didn't pick up on subtext well. Leonor had literally been trained on that crap, so it seemed second nature to her.

"Mab and I are roommates but I don't think you have any," she told him, leaning in a little so he knew she was just talking to him, even though there were literally four of them standing there and everyone else could probably hear her too. "You get the room to yourself because you're a boy and there aren't any other first year boys." She gestured around them to indicate the lack of other boys in their group of - again - four. "You can't go up to the wrong dorms because the rules say that boys and girls shouldn't be in each other's bedrooms and this way you can't break the rule."

OOC - If new students apply and Theo does end up with roommates, consider this retroactively edited to reflect that.

22 Leonor De Matteo Asking the real questions. 1471 0 5

Theo Spurn

December 18, 2019 4:25 AM

I need answers by Theo Spurn

Theo noticed the other girl stroking the couch too. He smiled at her hand, and gave it a little wave with his.

She started answering his questions. He had been talking to Professor Carter-Xavier but he didn't really mind so long as someone explained things. Unfortunately, the girl was not giving very helpful answers.

"That was the problem I'd noticed too," he added, regarding roommates. Sort of… He’d noticed once Professor Carter-Xavier divided them into boys and girls that he was the only boy, but there were other boys in the house. He thought that roommates were usually year and gender based but no one had said what would happen if no such other person existed. At home, they had had a lot of talks about roommates before coming to school. Things about respecting boundaries. This went both ways, and Mum had enchanted some of his soft things so that if people touched without asking, there would be Consequences. There had been so much talk about how he was supposed to be around his roommate(s) that it seemed rather anti-climactic if they weren't going to exist. Whilst his parents had seemed to think it needed a lot of talking about, Theo had just been excited for it. Every time he shared a room, it was fun. He was an only child but he had sleepovers with his cousins at least once a month, and then Mum returned the favour by having them to stay, and if he ever just felt like it, he could usually be sent there or Mum could just pull a cousin or two out of the fireplace. He had been looking forward to having a roommate. It would mean every night was a sleepover.

He supposed he could just ask other people to come over for sleepovers. Apparently only Pecari boys though, which was a bit frustrating. People had places that belonged to them, but he was used to those being quite malleable. He liked the come-and-go flow of his house. He decided to leave the roommate issue, as that would be resolved by asking people in for sleepovers. No one had said that wasn’t allowed. And school seemed annoying and weirdly specific about what wasn’t allowed, even when it made no sense. That brought him onto the next thing… He had asked ‘why’ and the girl’s answer had sort of been ‘because you can’t’ which was exactly the problem he’d spotted. It was a little bit like if there was some really soft velvet and someone was just sitting there and you asked why they weren’t stroking it and they answered ‘because my hands aren’t on it.’ That was factually accurate but it missed the point.

“The rules say I have to be here by ten at night but the school doesn’t physically throw me back here. And that’s a sensible rule because bedtime is a thing. You should ask before you go in people’s rooms but it should be up to people, not staircases. Why isn’t it allowed?”

13 Theo Spurn I need answers 1476 0 5

Leonor De Matteo

December 18, 2019 11:11 AM

You know, now that you mention it . . . by Leonor De Matteo

CW: Somewhat ableist undertones and microaggressions.

Okay, the little hand wave thing was precious. This guy was great. Leonor thought it was fascinating that he seemed both like he was maybe a little simple-minded and not really understanding things too well, but then also cut right to the core of it with some of his questions. It wasn't really that he was simple at all, it was that he saw things without all the assumptions everyone else just accepted. That was pretty cool. Leonor made a mental note that she absolutely wanted to be this guy's friend.

This was further solidified when he stumped her. She considered herself pretty smart, and there weren't a ton of people who had outwit her so far in the short duration of her life. Mara might be one, but she wasn't sure yet. Apparently Theo was another. It was a little bittersweet coming to school to find that there were so many other people smarter than she was, as it meant she wasn't as smart as she thought. But it also meant that she had great people to learn from, and she was still friggin' fabulous, however smart or not she was.

Leonor opened her mouth to respond, and then closed it again. She considered for another moment, opened her mouth again, and then shut it again. "Yeah... No tengo la menor idea. I've got nothing," she admitted, surprise at the predicament plain on her face. She turned to Professor Carter-Xavier again. "That's a great question actually; I want to know now too."

Theo was right about the great things that were happening on Leonor's hand as she touched the couch; who was to say he wasn't right about lots of things? "I like you," she told him more quietly, although clearly with a sense of approval, while they witted for the professor to answer.

OOC - "No tengo la menor idea" is Spanish-speaking-dude-on-a-forum for "I don't have the slighest/faintest idea."

22 Leonor De Matteo You know, now that you mention it . . . 1471 0 5

Mab

December 19, 2019 7:02 AM

Are you the weird ones or am I the weird one? by Mab

cw: implications of attempted assault.

The group of first year Pecaris was too small to hide in, but it had Theo in it, so she just walked in his shadow and expected she would be relatively unremarkable. The other girl was a deliberate attention seeker. Theo did it by accident, by just being Fey, but the girl was trying to look smart by answering questions intended for the professor. Mab was pretty sure they were from different subsets of Fey, possibly even different Courts.

Mab folded her hands inside her robe sleeves to stifle the herd instinct to stroke the couch after seeing both of her peers doing it. She did not need to touch the couch. Touching the couch was going to give it a complex. Who knew how a Fey couch would handle strangers touching it without permission? Fey things could be dangerous and unpredictable. She did not wish to be attacked by a couch.

She watched Professor Carter through narrowed eyes, trying to determine if she noticed the touching and, if so, whether she deemed it threatening. She had a small child on her shoulders, so presumably she would react with swift definitive action if they were doing something that might result in retaliation.

As she watched the Professor, she was also listening to the two other first years. Not paying attention to your surroundings was dangerous, and you never knew what overheard snippet of information may prove helpful.

But when the topic turned to confusion over why boys and girls were separated by forceful magic, she couldn’t help but turn her eyes from the couch and the professor to stare with incredulity at the two other students.

She had a different life experience than most people. She knew that. She’d lived for three months entirely on her own, unable to find her mother, and unwilling to return anywhere that might send her back to the people who had taken her away from Mom. She’d lived in poor, poverty stricken, high crime neighborhoods her whole life.

She knew why boys and girls were kept apart, but doubted a staircase was sufficient to stop those who were really determined. But at least it provided one safe place. Mab had been lucky. She’d found other safe places, too small for others to follow. She’d had fairies to protect and hide her from the scary people.

She was not so naive as to believe others were so fortunate in their escapes. She was also not so jaded as to believe that was primarily what the school was worried about with their staircase magic. A magic school meant for rich kids in the middle of the desert was nothing like a dark street in a bad part of Boston, and the requisite lowering of one’s defenses that sleeping required wasn’t considered nearly so dangerous here as it was there.

But neither was she so innocent as to believe that the teachers were wrong to worry about boys and girls going into each other’s sleeping spaces. Her mom had only been sixteen when Mab was born. Mab couldn’t remember ever not knowing that happened because a boy and a girl had gone to bed together. Of course, it wasn’t until much more recently when she learned that just sleeping on the same mattress didn’t cause babies, but still. She felt a gulf of difference between herself and the other two eleven year olds.

She dared not take a leaf out of the other girl’s book and answer in the teacher’s stead. Not only was that kind of rude, but she didn’t want them to know how Not Like Them she was.

1 Mab Are you the weird ones or am I the weird one? 1473 0 5

Isis Carter-Xavier

December 24, 2019 11:40 AM

I plead the fifth by Isis Carter-Xavier

Oh, for f-

Isis had some gut reaction thoughts that, for the sake of any potential young legilimency protiges, required some censoring. (Of course, Isis was a decently skilled user of occlumency, so it wouldn’t have mattered too much even if that were a real possibility.) Pecaris by nature tended to be a bit thick-headed - she herself, while not an alumni, being no exception - but she had never had anyone actually ask why they had to split up the two sexes.

For a moment, she just blinked at the kids as they talked through it together. What the hell was she supposed to tell them? And as a former teen mother, she had a bit more relevant, albeit personal, information the subject, but the whole “birds and the bees” thing was above her paygrade.

“There are,” Isis began with delicate and deliberate slowness, “a lot of reasons boys and girls need to be separated when they are out of supervision range. But you don’t really need to worry about that. Just know that’s how it is, and that’s that. And anyway,” she added, forcing a tone shift to sound more cheery, “you can always hang out with your opposite-gendered friends down here, in the Common Room.”

“Does anyone have any questions about your classes?” she posed, hoping to change the subject altogether. If that failed, she would have to try cute baby distraction. That was the next best technique. In the meantime, she was just willing herself to find it amusing, picturing the laugh she and Nathan could have about it later. His Teppenpaw first years, she imagined, were probably already a lot less trying.

12 Isis Carter-Xavier I plead the fifth 31 0 5

Theo Spurn

December 30, 2019 4:58 AM

Denied by Theo Spurn

The teacher started talking overly slowly. Theo disliked that, as it usually meant people thought he was being stupid when in fact it was usually the adult who was about to say something spectacularly dumb. And there it was. She was talking about ‘lots of reasons’ and ‘separating boys and girls’ and he almost expected the next words out of her mouth to be ‘ask your parents about it,’ and he gave an impatient sigh.

“Is this about sex?” he asked bluntly. Theo was very annoyed about sex. It was stupid. When he had been small, the rules had been very simple; if an area is covered by your underwear, it is a personal place and you do not touch it on other people. Maybe when you’re a grown up and you have a close relationship with someone, you can, but it was not something he should be doing or anyone else should be doing with him. That had been fine and clear and obvious, and who wanted to touch the bits that did peeing and pooping anyway because that would be gross? But adults always got super weird about it. They seemed to think that even naming body parts was a bad thing to talk about, or that if they didn’t keep them rigidly separated at any time that involved peeing/pooping/removing clothes then some kind of sex-related disaster would happen (again, why would anyone want to, given those associations??). Just because adults were, apparently, obsessed with it did not mean he was, and he resented the assumption. They mostly thought his interests were strange or boring and that he couldn’t understand that not everyone was fascinated with them (he could understand that, he just didn’t see it as a reason to stop being fascinated with them himself) yet constantly projected their own idea of fun onto him even though they also said it was a ‘grown up thing’ (and again, they thought him incapable of understanding that not everyone shared his interests whilst providing no model of not thinking that way themselves, which was further evidence that their right to have an opinion on what he liked could go die in a fire). He had also noticed that the underwear rule wasn’t working any more. People got upset with him now for touching legs, just because those were quite near the other bits. That was ridiculous. Your underwear did not (as far as he knew) start growing out to cover more of your body as you got older. In fact, judging by the adverts he’d seen in shops, ladies underwear got smaller and smaller and sometimes looked distinctly uncomfortable, both because of scratchy fabrics and because it looked like it got right up in your butt. And if legs were starting to be forbidden, where would it end? Would he stop being able to even boop someone on the nose because that was on your face and near your lips and lips did kissing? Or not be able to touch someone’s fuzzy glove because that was on their hand which was connected to their arm which was connected to their body which had their personal places on it? Would the ‘no touching’ zone just expand as he got older until sex had ruined everything? That sounded deeply unfair.

“Sex is a thing that grown ups do. We’re eleven,” he pointed out, sounding mildly disgusted. “And sometimes boys have sex with other boys and girls have sex with other girls, so if you want a ‘no sex’ rule this is really not very effective. If you want to have a no sex rule, you should just have one of those. I think that would be reasonable, and much less confusing. You wouldn’t even need it for most of us because it already exists and is called the law. And I just want to make blanket forts and eat marshmallows and not have sex. Do you like blanket forts and marshmallows?” he checked with his yearmates.

“You said there’s lots of reasons though,” he added to the professor, perfectly willing to give her a chance to start making sense. “So what are the others?” he asked, crossing his arms and staring at her, although his tone was still mild and curious rather than confrontational. “And why are they so important - so much more important than bedtime even - that its enforced by throwing us down the stairs using magic instead of just asking us nicely to follow it?”

13 Theo Spurn Denied 1476 0 5

Leonor De Matteo

January 01, 2020 3:43 PM

This is going to be a great year. by Leonor De Matteo

At first, Leonor was mostly just surprised by Theo's bluntness. As he went on though, she found that she had to work really hard just to keep from physically doubling over in laughter. It wasn't even that what he was saying was the sort of topic that made her giggle because it was adult and awkward, but just because it was so great how blunt he was and so funny and it was going to be so great to see the Head of House try to respond to that and Mab was still quiet and the whole thing was just funny. Also, it was a pretty good point. It was probably easier to separate them now, before they got interested in sex stuff, rather than keep them all together and separate them later on, but it wasn't really a great solution, like Theo said. Girls liked girls and boys liked boys and girls liked boys and boys liked girls and eleven-year-olds didn't like anybody. At least not in the grown-up way.

To be fair, she didn't really want to see other people when they had to change their clothes or when they were sleeping. She'd already be sharing a room with Mab - a fact which wasn't terrible but not Leonor's favorite either - and she didn't want to share with boys. Felipe was pretty clean as boys went and she wouldn't want to share a room with him either. His roommates sounded even worse, although Felipe would never be so crass as to say so out loud.

"I like how you think, Theo," Leonor told him quietly, not wanting to interrupt the professor's train of thought as she undoubtedly regretted her line of work. "You're smarter than grown-ups."

She turned to look at Mab, reading the girl's face and waiting to see whether she had anything to say. She didn't want to push, but she wanted to leave room for her too. Some people just needed a little more permission to be part of the conversation. Lord knew Felipe was that way. He could hardly get a sentence out unless someone was paying him all the attention they could, and even then he usually didn't say what he meant.

22 Leonor De Matteo This is going to be a great year. 1471 0 5

Mab

January 01, 2020 5:06 PM

I'm going to be Professor Carter-Xavier's favorite first year by Mab

The couch was apparently not dangerous. She wasn't totally sure Professor Carter-Xavier had noticed the fondling going on, but if it was dangerous, she'd probably be watching for signs of threat better. Though, to be fair, she was under a lot of pressure right now from Theo. He was almost certainly an eccentric kind of Fey if the others' reactions to him were anything to go by. She didn't know how completely fey the other girl was, but the Professor should have enough experience with the Land of Fey by now that she would be more familiar with Theo's brand of fey-ness if he was a common type. He clearly wasn't.

Mab stepped carefully further away from all of them, ducking her head and trying to turn invisible by holding a hand over her face, wanting nothing to do with this conversation, when the Mama Fey had her Baby Fey right there. This was barely appropriate material for them nevermind the toddler.

Then Theo was asking them about blanket forts and marshmallows, and Mab just shook her head no, not because she didn't like them, but because she just wanted this over so she could go make a blanket fort and hide from this entire disaster. Their Head of House was going to hate all of them after this, and Mab hadn't even said anything.

She hadn't even touched the freaking couch.

Because she was a normal person. Which apparently made her really weird here in the Land of Fey.

1 Mab I'm going to be Professor Carter-Xavier's favorite first year 1473 0 5