Headmaster Brockert
December 30, 2017 5:12 PM
Bonfire! by Headmaster Brockert
Today was the Midsummer Event. This year they were having the bonfire and...well, that was about the extent of it. The festivities this year more or less included a barbecue-though there was food there for any vegetarians amongst them , including barbecued tofu which sounded quite distgusting, along with the gluten-free and allergy crowd, if there were any students falling into those categories-and some circus performers for entertainment. The choir and the orchestra would also perform and then the students would be camping out in tents and generally hanging out around the fire, roasting s'mores.So it wasn't the most organized event ever. But then, it was bloody hard to come up with ways to make every event different each time. As it was, Mortimer didn't know why they couldn't repeat the way something was done if all the students who'd done it the first time around had graduated. It would still be new to the current batch.
At least next year was just the Ball. As much as Mortimer did not enjoy them, he had to admit it was nice that they didn't have to come up with a way to make them different every time.
Now the students were gathered out on the Pitch. He placed the Sonorus Charm on himself and spoke. "Welcome to the Bonfire. Have a good time." There were no announcements to make so Mortimer stepped down and got in line for the barbecue. It wasn't steak but admittedly, he would enjoy it.
OOC- Please do not cause any serious incidents with the fire as the staff will be watching to prevent such things. Tents are any number you want with a minimum of two. Have fun!
Subthreads: On a hunt [Tag Vlad] by Jehan Callahan with Vladimir Brockert
All by myself by Angelique Brockert with Ben Pierce
House Cup Winners by DH Skies with Lauren Song, Raine Collindale, Jozua Sparks
A good bonfire so far by Jasmine Delachene with Gary Harper
Later that evening... by Winston Pierce with Simon Mordue
End of an Era (tag Parker) by Cleo James with Parker Fitzgerald
A very important question (tag Jemima) by Owen Brockert with Jemima Wolseithcrafte
Can you handle this? by Georgia with Zevalyn
Waiting for poetry by Dorian Montoir with Tatiana Vorontsova
Time to say goodbye(Tag Sammy) by Kira Spaulding with Sammy Meeks
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Headmaster Brockert
Bonfire!
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Headmaster Brockert
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Kir McLeod
January 16, 2018 4:04 PM
I guess that's for the best by Kir McLeod
Kir was sort of excited for the bonfire. After all, who didn’t love a good fire? His dad and his aunt didn’t often reminisce about many things from their childhood - unsurprising given their eventual decisions to run away from the stifling Pureblood society and get themselves disowned - but when they did, it was Scotland, rather than family, that they reminisced about. New Year celebrations seemed like they’d been full of fire, including fire swinging, and effigy burning on a great big bonfire. These had been rather eclipsed in their adult life by running The McLeod Foundation’s New Year’s Eve party, an event which celebrated the achievements of their foundation supporting LGBTQ+ causes, and which consisted half of Scottish dancing, half drag cabaret, all very drunken and not necessarily a great combination with fire given that it was a) primarily indoors b) full of drag queens, who were amongst the most highly flammable people on the planet. They usually had a bonfire on the evening of New Year’s Day, because his family said it didn’t feel right to bring in the year without any fires, and everyone who wasn’t too abysmally hung over gathered around to burn an effigy of some notably unpopular public figure from the year. He doubted much of that would be going on at the Sonora fire. It was all wrong in a lot of ways. Summer was definitely the wrong season for fire, but that was what American fires were like. They were cutesy little things you made on camp outs to toast marshmallows on. And, well, not that he didn’t love toasted marshmallows, but it wasn’t quite the same as burning homophobic politicians atop a blazing pyre. He was pretty sure that wasn’t the kind of thing you could say to anyone without sounding like a psychopath though, especially as they were in America - and he indeed, was an Ameircan - and not Scotland. He was pleased to see that the bonfire was decently large, and the circus performers added a nice air of suitably renegade chaos.In deference to his usual fireside pursuits, or perhaps just because it was a good chance for a little bit of promotion, he’d donned a McLeod Foundation t-shirt, the name of the organisation emblazoned across his chest, book ended by little rainbow banners.
He was even more pleased when they got to actually go play with the circus equipment, although it didn’t necessarily look like they’d get to play with fire themselves, which he felt was something of a shame but probably for the best… He wished that he was good enough that doing so was an option, but as he almost definitely wasn’t, unless he had a freakish natural talent for some kind of circus thing, then it was probably better for his hair and eyebrows and everyone’s well being that he wasn’t going to.
He thought about trying juggling, because that was the skill he could see himself most often getting to use in something approaching real life, but Jozua’s twirling hoop caught his eye, and he also needed to make social contact with some people he could tent share with, so he decided to go join him. He had got as far as picking up a hoop when he noticed that Ginger Pierce was juggling fire and Raine Collindale was spinning it, which involved decidedly wiggling her leggings-clad hips. If questioned sternly, he may have been forced to admit to a moment of open-mouthed staring that had very little to do with the fire, before he came to his senses enough to ask Jozua
“How the heck are they doing that?”
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Kir McLeod
I guess that's for the best
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Kir McLeod
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Jozua Sparks
January 16, 2018 9:43 PM
Yeah. Sparks burn. by Jozua Sparks
Jozua honestly wasn't paying much attention to the people around him. He was pretty focused on the cursed green hoop that keep wanting to run away from him. So when someone close by asked, "How the heck are they doing that?" Jozua had no idea he was the person being addressed or what feats the speaker was talking about. But the question raised enough curiosity in him for him to look around. Georgia Kirkly was hula hooping in the normal manner, and doing surprisingly good with it. Kir McLeod was evidently the person who spoke and given the lack of other viable targets, Jozua gathered he'd been the one so addressed. Following Kir's line of sight - Oh. Wow.How was Raine doing that?
But he'd said they. That meant more than one person. Well, Joe was doing an unspectacular job of juggling and . . . Raine was still doing the flaming hoop thing, which was really hard to look away from.
Oh, more fire over there. Ginger Pierce. Whoa. Who knew the Teppenpaw Quidditch Captain could throw fire around like that? Then she neatly doused her fire sticks, bowed to her audience and wandered off. Huh.
And Raine was still fire hooping. He suddenly had a lot more respect for the activity which he had recently been learning. Speaking of, where was his hoop? Curse it. "Excuse me," he said to Kir and ran after where it had flown and rolled off while he was distracted. Returning with it, and not attempting to multitask, he remained holding the hoop but not doing anything with it as he said, "I have no idea," he answered the immediate question, because he really, honestly, had no idea about the mechanics of how they had done those things. "I had no idea Ginger could juggle like that, but Raine, I think Raine's in a circus. Didn't know she was so . . ." Jozua looked at her again and forgot what he'd been going to say. "I want my hoop on fire," he said after a moment. "That looks so awesome." Reason came back to him. "But I'd probably get third degree burns or something, so probably not yet."
"You gonna hoop?" he asked, waving Kir invitingly over to the pile. "Raine makes it look sexy, and Georgia's doing pretty great at it, too, but I feel like an idiot swinging it around on my arm and not even managing that."
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Jozua Sparks
Yeah. Sparks burn.
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Jozua Sparks
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Kir
January 17, 2018 11:55 AM
A little spark can be a good thing though by Kir
“Yeah, she is,” Kyte nodded, when Jozua pointed out that Raine was was really…. In spite of the sentence not ending with any discernible adjective, he definitely agreed. “I wish the Aladren girls were in Teppenpaw,” he mused, before realising how dumb that made him sound. “I mean-” he cut himself off, decided that any attempt to explain would probably see him digging himself a bigger hole.“Yeah, I wish I was good enough that playing with fire was a realistic option,” he agreed, his attention switching to Jozua as the boy engaged in a conversation with real actual finished sentences.
“I’ll give it a go,” he agreed. Either he would achieve the magical hypnotic power the girls had (he could but hope) or he would at least keep Jozua company in feeling like an idiot, which would be good for bonding.
“Round your waist is probably the easiest to start with,” the circus lady advised him. “Though hand spins aren’t too bad - try to use your thumb to hook it each time,” she advised both him and Jozua, “if you feel like waist spins are too girly.”
“I’m wearing a rainbow,” Kir pointed out, gesturing at the very obviously gay pride leaning of his t-shirt, taking a hoop and sliding it onto his hips. You didn’t exactly get raised by his parents and aunts and not take ‘unless that’s too girly’ as a direct challenge to do exactly whatever was being suggested in order to Prove A Point about gender stereotypes. He also didn’t particularly suffer from self-consciousness in any great degree. He’d never shied away from the dance floor at parties, and how different could this be to working it to ‘Hips Don’t Lie’? He also figured he couldn’t send the hoop flying into Jozua’s face this way, and that would probably help him in the ‘making a friend’ stakes. People tended to like their noses unbroken in relationships.
“You can swing side to side, or front to back, whatever feels natural to you,” the hooping lady advised.
Kir gave it a go, singing to himself in his head as he did so. Mostly in his head. A ‘como se llama’ and a ‘mi casa, su casa’ might have slipped out outloud. He had pretty decent hip action though, and the hoop kept up its rotation until the circus lady complimented him, at which point he got distracted and dropped it.
“So, do I look as good as the girls?” he asked Jozua, picking up the hoop and beginning again, “Minus the fire, in Raine’s case, obviously,” he added, in between humming bursts of Shakira, as he felt that was definitely helping. Kir didn’t always have the same filters as other people about what acceptable ‘guy talk,’ was and between this and the rainbow banner on his t-shirt, it was probably a good thing he’d been very obviously checking out Raine, otherwise Jozua might have got rather confused. He was potentially still getting somewhat mixed messages.
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Kir
A little spark can be a good thing though
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Kir
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Jozua
January 17, 2018 2:10 PM
Really, let’s not spark anything here by Jozua
Jozua gave Kir an odd look, momentarily confused about whether Kir meant the House Aladren or the town Aladren, but deciding that he must mean the House Aladren because Kir probably didn’t know any of the town Aladren girls, but Jozua wasn’t quite sure what difference it made what House they were in, unless Kir wanted to see them hula ... oh. “Wouldn’t mind one of the Pecaris being in Teppenpaw right now either,” Jozua agreed. Not that that wouldn’t make things even weirder between him and Lily, but he did think she might have fun doing circusy things with him.The circus lady came back over as she saw Kir going for a hoop and made recommendations. Jozua was surprised when Kir went for the waist hooping. Oh Merlin, between her comment and Kir ignoring the girliness factor and pointing out his shirt’s rainbows, that made Jozua look like some kind of sexist homophobic bigot.
With a heavy sigh of defeat, he was about to step inside the hoop when he noticed that Kir was actually good at this. He quickly averted his eyes. Lily had seemed awful quick to think he was gay and he was not about to let that idea spread. Nor was he going to look like a totally uncoordinated fool with no hip action next to all these people who actually had talent.
He started twirling the hoop on his arm again, this time using his thumb to try to keep it from running pell mell all over the backstage area. That worked a little better, until Kir asked...
“Seriously?” Jozua stared at him, and realized the thought had come out out loud. “How should, I, you,” he tried desperately to recover some kind of dignity and coherence, but that just gave his hoop the opportunity it had been waiting for. He glared after its retreating loops, took a deep breath and returned his attention back to Kir, arms crossed defensively in front of him, and cheeks flaming almost as brightly as Raine’s hoop. “Maybe Louis might think so.” He realized he was watching Kir’s hips again and looked away quickly, his embarrassment burning even brighter. “But I totally don’t!” he added and fled to get his hoop.
He returned a few moments later, still flushed but not as deeply. He pointedly stood to face towards Raine rather than Kir as he started arm twirling again. Which was a bad idea. He barely caught the hoop before it got away and turn around again so he couldn’t see either of them easily.
Then he considered this might suggest he thought Kir was as distracting as Raine, so he turned back to face Kir again. And Merlin curse it all! That was distracting, too!
He caught the hoop before it rolled off too far and stated very clearly, so there was no confusion going on here, “I like Lily.” Nevermind that she didn’t like him back. That was immaterial.
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Jozua
Really, let’s not spark anything here
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Jozua
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Kir
January 17, 2018 5:26 PM
Mind the flying hoops don't shatter your fragile masculinity by Kir
Kir was tempted for a moment to ask which Pecari Jozua specifically wanted there, but he didn’t necessarily think that was a fair question given how little he knew the other boy. He also wasn’t particularly keen to answer any reciprocal enquiries, so he just let it go.He dropped his hoop in surprise at Jozua’s tone. The other boy sounded kind of pissed off with him. Jozua rapidly went through fumbling his hoop, being snappy, and turning his back on Kir in quick succession. Kir managed to process that Louis Valois was possibly gay and that Jozua had very fragile masculinity, before the other boy decided he wasn’t done, dropped his hoop again, and decided to defend even further how very heterosexual he was. Kir made a mental note to try and slip Louis some flyers later, and maybe have a quiet word with him, but there wasn’t much he could do about that right now. There was, however, the issue of Jozua. He stepped out of his hoop and picked it up, gripping it in one hand and bouncing the rim on the floor.
Kir felt his neck burning. He had, rather surprisingly, not got into an argument with anyone at school so far over his family’s politics, and he wouldn’t have pegged a… a relatively normal seeming boy from his house as likely to be the first. He didn’t want to argue with Jozua. He knew that meeting hate with hate never got you anywhere. And ‘hateful’ was a strong word for what Jozua being. He was just… Uncomfortable. Not that that was acceptable in Kir’s book. How could you be uncomfortable with other people’s existence, and not feel like that was wrong? How could who other people loved and or were attracted to be something that wound someone up this much? But he wasn’t going to yell, or put Jozua down. Kir had been sorted into Teppenpaw for a reason - he was good at taking a deep breath, and trying to be calm. Diplomatic. He wasn’t quite sure how Jozua had ended up there, but that wasn’t the issue right now. When Jozua turned back, Kir was wearing a look that said he wasn’t angry, just disappointed.
“I don’t care who you like. Or who anyone else does. That’s kind of the point,” Kir replied to Jozua’s declaration. “Unless it’s me, then I’d be very keen to know,” he added. “Why are you sound wound up by what I said?” he challenged.
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Kir
Mind the flying hoops don't shatter your fragile masculinity
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Kir
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Jozua
January 18, 2018 10:08 AM
Hey! That’s harsh! by Jozua
Jozua stared at Kir, confused and taken aback. “I thought- You weren’t? I - Oh.“ Okay. He must have totally misread the other boy’s question and consequently overreacted in entirely the wrong way for present company. Now he was still embarrassed but for entirely different reasons.He rolled the hoop on the ground in front of him, just to have something for his hands to do while he tried to figure how much of an explanation Kir was owed. Something certainly was, and if Kir had been Joe (not that Joe would have ever asked such a question to spark this whole debacle) the whole conversation between him and Lily would have probably come out (or at least the parts that weren’t protected by Adventurer’s Honor), but he just didn’t know Kir that well.
Of course, he had sort of already skipped ahead to the key point of the whole mess and told Kir outright the thing that Lily had been trying to get at for that whole conversation. Next to that, the rest of it was basically nothing.
So Jozua sighed and his shoulders slumped, and he repeated, more in defeated admission than the defensive assertion of just a minute ago, “I like Lily. When I tried to avoid telling her that, she thought I was telling her I was gay.” He looked up quickly and bit back his reflexive assertion that he was not because he was pretty sure Kir wouldn’t appreciate it. “I thought maybe other people thought that too and you were hitting on me because you thought I was into that kind of thing. Sorry, I overreacted.”
He hesitated just a moment then asked, just to be sure, “You weren’t hitting on me, right?”
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Jozua
Hey! That’s harsh!
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Jozua
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Kir
January 18, 2018 6:37 PM
So are you by Kir
Kir waited patiently for Jozua to form his thoughts into sentences. Overall, Jozua seemed to be calming down, which was probably a good thing, as Kir had suddenly remembered that the other boy ran the duelling club. He liked to think he’d have been heroic to call him out on his reaction either way but he had this sneaky doubt that the reason he’d never got into a confrontation of any kind before was because he was a coward and kept avoiding it when it needed to come up.Although it seemed like his chances for bravery weren’t quite over yet… Jozua had apologised. And checked that nothing gay was going on, because Merlin forbid that anyone should be openly gay in public in a high school. Kir could accept the apology, and assure Jozua that this was all just cool straight bros hanging out being straight, and could leave the encounter with his kneecaps facing their usual direction. Or could he try to explain…
“Thanks. It sounds like your year was… complicated,” he conceded. “And I’m not hitting on you,” he confirmed, Homophobes aren’t really my type. He bit back the response. Boys weren’t really his type, he was pretty sure, but that was by far the less relevant point right now. He would rather his classmates thought he was gay than that he would judge anyone who was, as in his book, only one of those was a bad thing to be. He would rather do what was kind and right than what was safe or easy. He would rather risk his kneecaps than let his family down.
“Jozua…. The thing is though…. It shouldn’t matter whether I did or not, or whether you are or not. If a girl hit on you, and you didn’t like her, you wouldn’t bite her head off, so why do it to me? Just cos you’re not gay doesn’t mean you should treat it like it’s something disgusting. People think they don’t know anyone gay in school. So they think they can make it into a joke, or an insult. And they wouldn’t say it to a gay person’s face - they’re not cruel - so they think that everything they’re doing is fine. But is it any wonder most people don’t come out in highschool if that’s how their classmates talk about them?”
His mouth had never been so freaking dry. But, if his kneecaps were to be obliterated, at least they would die a hero’s death. He would have felt like such a fraud if he’d just walked away.
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Kir
So are you
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Kir
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Jozua
January 18, 2018 9:52 PM
You underestimate my level of freakability by Jozua
Oh, good. Not hitting on him. That was good. Very good. It would make the next three years very awkward otherwise. Then Kir kept talking and Jozua began to suspect Kir might be making assumptions of his own. He made some valid points too that Jozua might need to think about more another time, but he had one thing wrong.“Oh, no, I’d freak out if a girl hit on me, too,” he promised. “Probably differently,” he admitted, “But I’d’ve definitely concluded the same way, with a forceful assertion that I like Lily.” Of that he was certain. "I wasn't just throw a girl's name at you. I was throwing the girl's name at you." Such a flirting hadn’t happened yet, and he honestly didn’t expect it to, but he had no intention of leaving Lily for another girl over such a paltry reason as that she didn’t love him back that way and someone else might.
Truthfully, Jozua wasn’t even sure he liked Lily that way either. He just knew he want to be with her for the rest of his life in whatever capacity she wanted him there. He did recognize that he got jealous and felt their future together was threatened if she talked about boyfriends, though, which was what had led him to believe he must like-like her instead of just liking her.
He took a deep breath and let it out again. “Heck, I’d probably freak out and bite her head off if Lily changed her mind and hit on me.“ Jozua began spinning the hoop restlessly between his hands. “The whole thing just makes me nervous and I say dumb things when I get nervous.”
He was nervous now, but figured Kir had already got hit with some dumb words from Jozua, so he could risk a few more, and he did want to know, for potential future need, “So if you really just want to spend the rest of your life adventuring around the world with your best friend, and you aren’t interested in dating anyone because she’s not interested in you, what is the culturally sensitive way to handle someone else fishing for compliments about their sexiness?”
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Jozua
You underestimate my level of freakability
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Jozua
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