Creating an Act. on Library

Cepheus Princeton

July 12, 2012 3:13 AM

Creating an Act. by Cepheus Princeton

OOC: I’m going to say this is before the Quidditch finale, a few weeks after the beginning of term. Don’t mind the fuzzy-time.

Since the last time Cepheus had spoken to Alicia, they had never quite decided what they were going to do for their act. They had decided on who they wanted in, but not on what. Classes had been extremely busy on Cepheus’s part and he assumed the same for Alicia. Second year was more difficult than first year, obviously, and the second term had Cepheus stressed both for the Quidditch final and the loads of school work he still needed to get done. He had never been in a final match before, especially not in Quidditch, and he felt like he was being tested. If this match was lost, it would be on his shoulders alone. He just needed to stop thinking like that and perhaps he would be all right.

He had sent his eagle owl Monty to deliver notes to his fellow partners in their skit, hoping that, if Alicia wanted more people, she would pass on the word. He didn’t really mind anyone at Sonora as long as they were pure-bloods. He did mind that nuisance McLachlan, but he highly doubted Alicia would invite a fourth-year into their little troupe. Cepheus shook his head and smoothed down his blonde hair as he walked into the library where he’d asked them to meet him.

The library was mutual ground amongst all of his peers and Cepheus sat at an empty table big enough to fit them. He wouldn’t want to leave anyone out. In his mind he had already named himself and Alicia the leaders and creators of this group, but he wasn’t about to declare it to them all. After all, this was a group, not a dictatorship. Cepheus was not always the quickest with ideas anyway even if he did enjoy being the leader. Occasionally, anyway.

Cepheus hadn’t bothered bringing any materials with him, though perhaps that was not a smart idea. He looked rather ridiculous sitting in the library with nothing on his hands. He grabbed a random book from the shelf nearest him and looked at the title. Boars and One Hundred and One Ways to Cook Them by Boram Cook. Cepheus raised his eyebrows, but opened the book anyway. It wouldn’t hurt to see how one could cook a boar. As if Cepheus would cook one himself anyhow. That was the house elf’s job.

Finally someone showed up just as Cepheus was getting into the way a boar’s hoof could be pickled. He looked up and snapped the book shut, embarrassed at getting caught. “All right?” he greeted them, putting the book down on the table. “It was the first book I grabbed,” he added in explanation, shrugging his shoulders. “Who knows when information about cooking a boar could come in handy?” He smirked and put the book back onto the shelf.

40 Cepheus Princeton Creating an Act. 216 Cepheus Princeton 1 5

Thad Pierce

July 12, 2012 12:47 PM

FYI, my talents do not include creativity by Thad Pierce

To be completely truthful - a habit Thaddeus like to keep with himself if not everyone else - he was quite relieved when he and Evan received Cepheus' invitation to meet in the library to discuss a concert act. He was still working with Evan, which fulfilled all his previous expectations for his concert act, but he would also be working with at least one Crotalus. That all but guaranteed they would have something of a plan and strategy before stepping onto the stage come midsummer, which was not something he could have been sure about working with only Evan. Last night, he'd had a dream where they had gone out wearing costumes made of sticks, pinecones and weeds and recited all the properties of wolfsbane because that was the first thing that came to mind while standing there in front of everybody and their parents.

This, he was certain, would not come to pass now, thank Merlin. He just hoped nobody would expect great creative ideas out of him, because reciting the properties of wolfsbane was one of the more exciting acts he had put on in his dreams since the Headmistress announced the concert.

"Hello," he greeted Cepheus as he found the table they would be using for today's planning session. He took some interest in Cepheus' choice of reading material - and made sure he put it away in its proper location because Thad took his position as a library assistant very seriously - and made a note to look through it later in case he ever did need to know how to cook a boar. His cooking skills were improving with Waverly's baking club, and moving beyond sweet pastries might be advisable someday. House elves would be available in most ordinary situations, but what if a plague wiped them all out? Thad had no intention of dying of hunger if something happened to his servants.

He may also need to read a book on boar hunting, or the acquired knowledge of boar cooking would not be practical. Somehow, he didn't think bashing one over the head with his beater's bat would be effective, and flinging a bludger at one would be even less so, if slightly more survivable.

Still, these factors were not relvant to the purpose of their meeting, so he let the subject of boar cooking drop. "Do we have any idea what kind of act we're planning yet, or is that what we're discussing today?"

1 Thad Pierce FYI, my talents do not include creativity 213 Thad Pierce 0 5

Alicia Bauer

July 13, 2012 1:40 PM

Mine do include research. by Alicia Bauer

She couldn’t pretend, to herself anyway, to be completely comfortable with Cepheus stepping up and getting things moving while she had been trying to come up with a complete plan and a strategy for convincing everyone to go along with it before even calling a group together, but Alicia was determined to make the best of it. She could still be second in command; honestly, considering the number of old-school pureblood males in the rough sketch of a group they had come up with at the Opening Feast, that was still doing well. Thad’s family was ruled by his grandmother, but she knew enough to know that wasn’t typical. That sort, from what she’d gathered, usually thought girls ought to be purely ornamental when they weren’t actively having babies.

Besides, she still considered herself the main link between the Crotalus and Aladren sides of the act. She was the person who knew people. It wouldn’t have even occurred to a lot of these people to get together and be awesome if not for her, and Thad and Evan would have ended up doing something strange in public again. She might not be the face of the event, but she was still relevant.

Seeing Thad and Cepheus together at the meet point as she approached it, she was momentarily not sure if she should be pleased to have successfully arrived early, so the three of them could be clearly in charge the way she had planned from the beginning, or if she should be worried that they might end up with only the three of them and end up as just one more tiny assembly among others, but she settled on the first quickly and walked over with a smile, just in time to hear Thad’s comment. “We know it’s going to be the best this school has ever seen,” she said, taking a seat and smiling between the two of them as she put the folder she had put together on the table in front of her.

“I’ve been doing some research,” she said by way of explanation about that. “Some into the old Concerts, you know, from a long time ago, and I talked to my sisters and my uncle about the other two they’ve had since they restarted.” Technically, she had gotten more out of Anne about the first revived Concert than she had out of Uncle Geoff, who she was pretty sure thought she was weird now, but she wasn’t sure what they would think of her getting intel from a tutor even if that tutor weren’t a social anomaly. Anne just had to make things complicated, but she, apparently unlike Uncle Geoff, kept everything and liked nothing better than to talk about ancient history, both the literal kind and the almost equally distant days when she’d been in school. Alicia would take help wherever she could get it, and now, she actually had a good idea of what the previous two Concerts had looked like. “I thought, if no one had had any revelations since we got back, maybe we could look through that and at least figure out what kinds of things have been the most popular and go from there.”

So maybe she couldn’t resist trying to impress people. The whole point of the Concert was to impress people. If she started with two of the people she liked best at this school, who were also working with her to impress the masses, well, that was just an added perk. She really did believe research had been a good idea on its own merits, so it wasn't like she'd solely done it just to see if they would look impressed by her dedication...and the evidence of her family being an institution here.

16 Alicia Bauer Mine do include research. 210 Alicia Bauer 0 5

Cepheus

July 18, 2012 2:51 PM

Thank Merlin. by Cepheus

Cepheus himself wasn't exactly sure what Alicia had been planning, but she was clearly the brains of this entire scheme. He opened his mouth to respond to Thad's question, but Alicia beat him to it as she came around. He smiled at her in greeting before she went off on her explanations. She certainly had been doing her research while Cepheus had been doing his schoolwork and being busy with other things. It helped that she had relatives who had gone to Sonora before her.

"I like it," Cepheus said after she finished. "I've got no ideas of my own, really, so it'll be a great help to look through the past concerts." Cepheus enjoyed impressing people and being impressed, so he was rather glad that at least one in their group was doing the work. Research, that is. He looked at his two companions, stumped for a moment. "Right, so...where should we look? Do they keep records of the past concerts in the library?"

Obviously Cepheus was not quite used to looking and researching things on his own yet. That is, when he was researching something about society's social traditions and all. His father usually researched those things for him which Cepheus was extremely grateful for. One day when Cepheus became the patriarch of the family, he would have to learn how to look up old pure-blood families and stick his nose into history books. Yech. Well, this would be a lesson to take home, certainly.

Alicia was going to be the leader from here on out and Cepheus had to be OK with that. He didn't really mind especially if she knew more than he. There was still a bit of a churning in his stomach at the thought, but as long as they put on a brilliant performance and beat everyone else out, he would be more than fine. It was the end result that mattered more than anything.

0 Cepheus Thank Merlin. 0 Cepheus 0 5

Thad Pierce

July 25, 2012 10:19 PM

Shall we begin then? by Thad Pierce

Thad had already been feeling good about this act, and Alicia's arrival doubled that when her first words included 'research' as one of them. His knowledge of previous concerts was limited since this was Derry's first one as well. He supposed he had distant relatives in the previous two, but they were Californians and didn't count. His sister had been present for the most recent, he supposed, but he certainly couldn't ask her about it. If he got another chance to talk to her without it looking like cross-branch fraternization, he had questions of much higher priority than what the previous concert had been like.

Fortunately, Alicia seemed to have that covered with her own relatives. Rachel and Kate were obviously old enough to have been in one since they were both older than Derry, and she apparently had an uncle in the one before that. For a moment, he was mildly irritated that Salem had closed; had he been attending his family's traditional school, he would know such facts like these that could only be passed from alumni to student. It vanished quickly though when he recognized that if he'd been attending Salem, he wouldn't know anything at all about Sonora, and probably wouldn't have ever met Evan, Alicia, or Cepheus.

Well, maybe Evan. Some Brockerts had attended Salem, he thought. In theory, Cepheus's family also could have chosen Salem to bridge the Atlantic if it was still operational, since it was both older and closer to Europe. It sounded like Alicia's was firmly rooted in Sonora though.

"I haven't seen any records," Thaddeus admitted in answer to Cepheus' question, feeling his time as a library assistant gave him some authority on the matter. "Did you?" he asked Alicia, in case she had stumbled upon them during one of her shifts. He didn't think it likely though; he thought he had covered the place fairly well, and she had consulted family hear-say rather than official written accounts for her research.

"I heard the Teppenpaws are doing some kind of muggle play with inferi in it, and Henny said she thought she would recite poetry, so if she isn't joining us, we shouldn't try that because I promised not to steal her idea." Alicia and Cepheus had made no such promise but he thought pressing his own upon the whole group was the best way to be sure that wasn't what they would end up doing. Unless, of course, Henny did join them, in which case, he wasn't safe from that fate yet, but perhaps he could find an equally diplomatic way to turn down the idea if it rose again.

"Also," he added, "just so you know, I won't be doing anything musical for this concert. My music tutor quit after two months with me. What skills do we have? I can memorize and fly really well, and I'm so-so at acting, I guess. Oh, and I can ball-room dance." He paused for a moment, then asked, "Would we be total wusses if we performed an elegant dance routine?"

1 Thad Pierce Shall we begin then? 213 Thad Pierce 0 5

Alicia

July 27, 2012 1:55 PM

Let's do this. by Alicia

“Nothing official, no,” Alicia said, feeling mildly irritated with the previous two administrations for not properly documenting everything and binding it up for future generations to consult. “I think there’s a few references to the old ones – you know, like a century ago – here and there, but not good, detailed programs.” She laughed. “Maybe we should make the programs this time, and that be our contribution. Or at least give the idea to someone.”

That, she thought, was very generous of her, even as a joke, since it wouldn’t do her any good. She would be keeping very close tabs on what everyone did this time, and she really didn’t care that much how it went for other people the next time they had to do this. In fact, the more troubles everyone else had, the better off her group would be. It was, though, the kind of work that wouldn’t be half-bad; there wouldn’t be all this risk of potential humiliation, it might even look good to the staff, putting together something like that and making the ton of copies that would be necessary….

She made a note on the margin of a page in her folder to consider that for the next Concert. It would be too late for prefect, but it might give her and the guys an edge for making it onto the Heads’ ballot, if they proposed it early enough in the year. She thought the next Concert would be in their sixth year. If they thought of something better then, that would be great, but if they didn’t, it would be fantastic to not have to remember an idea for four years.

Alicia nodded when Thad relayed what he knew about what other people were doing, and what Henny might be doing specifically. “And we’re definitely not doing a play about Muggles being chased by Inferi,” she said, wondering how that would even work before remembering that sheet she’d seen in the Hall, the one Kate was on, and biting the inside of her mouth to not laugh. Zombies, that was what he meant. Well, they definitely weren’t doing that, either; she had, somehow, kept any of the people in this school that she actually liked from realizing what she – what her biological father actually was, so the further she could stay from anything remotely like that, the better.

She made a note of Thad’s skills and his absolute refusal to do anything with music in it, wondering what to say her skills were, before smiling when Thad brought up dancing. “Of course not,” she said. “Especially if you two had a gigantic fake-duel first over who got to actually dance.” Since she was the only girl here right now and somehow, she just didn’t see Thad and Cepheus dancing together. Evan, maybe, but not these two.

A thought came from that to her, and she tapped her fingernails against her folder for a second in thought. “Actually, that could work,” she said. “If we can get some of those bums we room with to help out, anyway…Something like a masque? There’s a mock-battle and then we all dance together?” That was not something she had done specific research on for this, but she thought that she had the gist of it right. Take away the rhymed dialogue, and it might not be too dissimilar to what the Teppenpaws had done that one year, but it would still be distinctive....“I have a cousin in fourth year, I can get him to do any magic for building a castle thing in the background that we’d have trouble with, and there’s still some helpers lying around in general….What do you guys think?” she added, before she started planning too far ahead here.

16 Alicia Let's do this. 210 Alicia 0 5

Cepheus

July 28, 2012 4:09 PM

Idea #1 by Cepheus

Not having detailed programs set back their team a bit, but it wouldn't matter in the long run. They were creative enough to make their own? Well, at least Alicia was. Thad seemed to have been doing his own research among the other contenders, er, performers. It was always good to have someone scope out the competition. Cepheus was already proud of his mates. He could only imagine what it would look like, seeing Muggles being chased by the Inferi. It made him smile at the ridiculous picture he'd drawn up in his mind. That would be a sight to see.

Ballroom dancing. Cepheus was not horrid at it, but it wasn't exactly his cup of tea. But if he had to do it for a brilliant performance, he would do it.

An idea struck as soon as Alicia said castle. "I know. There could be an evil potioneer who wants to take over the castle that you," he pointed at Alicia, "are trapped in or the princess of or whatever and there could be a wizard who tries to save the princess and duels the potioneer for her. But then the princess could summon the wizard's broom and escape herself. And after the wizard or the potioneer, whichever direction we want to go, wins the duel, they can dance together." It was so cheesy he could die. "Or we can have a duel to the 'death' for a dance..." He trailed off, unsure of how to articulate his thoughts properly. "Anyway, it's just an idea," he said, waving it off now that he was sufficiently embarrassed. Perhaps it would be best if he didn't speak.

Most of Mother's bedtime stories consisted of princes saving princess, but it would be a nice change to have the princess save herself. His best female friend back home had influenced him quite a bit. He wasn't sure how that would make the prince in his story look, but they all got what they wanted. If Alicia didn't want to fly, then Cepheus envisioned he and Thad duelling in the air. It was a beautiful vision, but he didn't know how the others would take it.

0 Cepheus Idea #1 0 Cepheus 0 5

Evan Brockert

July 30, 2012 11:33 AM

Sorry I'm late. by Evan Brockert

He was supposed to meet with Thad and some others to talk about what they were doing for the Concert but Evan was late. The second year had gotten sidetracked, as before this meeting he'd been in the gardens, in search of leaves and pebbles and other things that most people-people like Great Grandmother and Chelsea-would refer to as 'yard waste' and Evan referred to as 'art supplies'. Technically, as far as the Aladren was concerned, just about anything could qualify as art supplies.

The second year felt sort of bad for being late. He tended to be on time for classes, but other things, well he just had this tendency to be distracted. However, as he'd been told many many times, the world did not operate on Evan-time and while Thad might forgive him, the others were sure not to be pleased. Alicia Bauer and Cepheus Princeton seemed like the sorts that were even more intense than Thad was. The only reason Evan wasn't afraid that the Aladren girl would disembowel him was that his family was powerful and hers wasn't.

Truthfully, he thought some people needed to relax . It could cause major problems if they didn't and they could end up hurting themselves like Autumn did. Evan didn't quite understand his cousin's illness-his mother still saw him as the baby and protected him from a lot, though Nora would surely be happy to tell him- but he knew that she was very very sick and would struggle with it the rest of her life-and it had something to do with her being a perfectionist. The second year didn't really want that to happen to anyone else.

Plus, well, more relaxed, free spirited people were just easier to be around. Okay, Autumn was only hard on herself, but some people had majorly high standards for others. His great-grandfather was like that. Supposedly, a lot of pureblood patriarchs-and purebloods in general-were. Which come to think of it, might have been why his cousin had the problems that she did.

That didn't mean that they didn't deserve common courtesy though, so as Evan walked over to join the others, he gave them an apologetic smile. "Sorry that I'm late everyone." He said sheepishly as he sat down.

11 Evan Brockert Sorry I'm late. 212 Evan Brockert 0 5