[Staff Lounge] Halfway to halfway! on Sonora Lounges

Mary Brooding

September 07, 2018 11:58 PM

[Staff Lounge] Halfway to halfway! by Mary Brooding

Busying herself about a teapot and an array of treats she'd convinced a prairie elf to help her with, Mary could hardly keep from humming something happy as she worked. It was November, a third of the way through the school year almost and just over halfway to winter break. While most of the professors and staff at Sonora had been working much longer than she had, Mary couldn't help the feeling of wanting to celebrate with them that that meant she herself was nearly halfway through her first semester as a professor. It also marked some very significant life changes for her and she couldn't have run out of reasons to be excited if she'd tried. But Mary never tried to do that.

Instead, she was preparing a celebratory snack for her colleagues.

She had warned Tabitha about her efforts in advance so that the woman wouldn't be so surprised to find her there if she did find time to come enjoy. Mary had picked a Tuesday to put her plan into action so she had all day to grade papers, examine potions, and prepare lessons, all while enjoying the company of her colleagues. She could hardly contain her excitement at the idea of getting to know the other witches and wizards she worked with a little better.

While she wasn't one to make or keep friends-- until recently when she'd found herself drawn to someone much more deeply than as friends--, Mary was certainly one to socialize. She wasn't extroverted per se, but certainly outgoing, and the opportunity to mingle the day away sounded perfect. Of course, she couldn't help also hoping Tabitha herself might stop in at some point.

When she took a seat a safe distance away from the snacks (it wouldn't do to be leering over people as they chose their treats), Mary was surprised to find someone coming in almost right away. It was early still and Mary hadn't expected anyone for a while. She wasn't sure what to think of the bittersweet discovery that it was not Tabit-- Professor Hawthorne.

"Hello!" she greeted the approaching staff member, lowering the papers she'd hardly even started on. "We're almost to Winter Break!"

(OOC - Feel free to have multiple threads throughout the day or interact with each other. This just seemed very Mary and quite a bit of fun as well. Eep!)

22 Mary Brooding [Staff Lounge] Halfway to halfway! 1424 Mary Brooding 1 5

Grayson Wright

September 10, 2018 11:35 PM

Surprise and slight awkwardness. by Grayson Wright

There was, Gray supposed, some truth to the idea of the writer as recluse – but only the writer of poetry or narrative fiction. Scriptwriters, at least of his sort, however, worked together – maybe it was his job to write a whole script, or parts of a script, but since multiple episodes were being produced at once, writers were constantly conferring about continuity, passing around drafts, working in half-cubicles where everyone could see over the walls. Later, when he had been in charge of storylines himself, he had still had other writers around, bouncing ideas off each other and delegating filler episodes and the like. He knew of outfits, too, where one guy might write the whole script, but it was with certain people in mind for certain parts, tweaking as performances went along, and so forth. It wasn’t, in his experience, a solitary art.

Consequently, he found it hard to work now without that interactive element – or at least, that was what he told himself was the problem, rather than, say, the lack of a deadline by which he either wrote a scene or admitted he had not written a scene and thus damaged his career. Fortunately, living in the communal environment of a school did have a few compensations, one of which was the staff lounge. He did not know how to interact with them as freely as he had his old colleagues, especially now, with all the newness, but he could sit quietly and look like he was doing papers and actually listen to people converse, trying to catch the rhythms of conversations and what regular adults, those not in the creative business, talked about, looping his colleagues into what passed for a process these days without their knowledge.

This morning, however, he was more interested in finding some papers he thought he might have left behind in a fit of genuine absent-mindedness the night before than in overhearing conversations – a fortunate occurrence, as he didn’t expect anyone to be about yet. He was therefore surprised to find the room already occupied by a) snacks and b) the Potions teacher.

He blinked through his glasses, brown eyes faintly bemused at the announcement that it was almost midterm. “Yes,” he said. “We’re closer to it every day.” He remembered something relevant. “Ah – this is your first year here,” he said, as much to himself as her. “The first half year is…well, not the easiest, anyway,” he said. “I replaced someone after midterm, my first year. At least they’re getting used to you from the first day?”

16 Grayson Wright Surprise and slight awkwardness. 113 Grayson Wright 0 5

Mary Brooding

September 12, 2018 2:18 AM

Two of my favorite things! by Mary Brooding

Mary was pretty proud of herself. She'd neither avoided interacting with her coworkers nor bounded on them upon the start of a new conversation. Two for two, really. Still, she couldn't help practically beaming as Professor Grayson Wright approached. He had the look of a man on a mission and Mary smiled, thinking he reminder her very much of Tabitha. His comment about replacing someone after midterm was similar to Tabitha's experience as well, and Mary found herself more at ease than she might've been otherwise.

"I hope that's true," Mary replied, smiling happily from her seat. "Nobody's managed to poison themselves or each other yet and I think that was my first priority." She laughed and leaned over to knock on the wooden table.

"I see you in here pretty often," Mary observed as she rolled her shoulders and did finally stand up. Her drink had run out and she replaced it with a fresh cup of hot chocolate as she spoke. Her comment was only half true anyway: while she did see Professor Wright most times she was in the staff lounge, she herself was rarely there. "I admire your ability to work when it gets so loud in here! I can't imagine how much grading you have. Most of the Advanced students take Charms, don't they?"

Mary had no idea whether that was true but her very quick in-the-moment logic gave her some reasons to back it up at least if he questioned it and providing a conversation topic was something that mattered very much to her. She picked up a cookie and held it in her hot chocolate for a moment before eating it as she waited for him to reply.

22 Mary Brooding Two of my favorite things! 1424 Mary Brooding 0 5

Grayson Wright

September 12, 2018 7:23 PM

Hm, to each their own I suppose. by Grayson Wright

“Hm, good priority,” said Gray when Mary described her success in preventing incidences of poisoning. “I don’t even want to think about the amount of paperwork if that wasn’t a priority.”

Snapshot: Student A poisons Student B, resulting in much paperwork for Professor. Professor snaps and poisons Student A in revenge. Would that make a better comedy or a horror show or realism or what? Gray could see how to spin the narrative into a short story or episode script several ways. Realism might be pushing it a little, but with a sufficiently delicacy of words in the fiddly bits, he might hit the particular slant of satire which would pass itself off as literary, while still making people laugh at teachers murdering their students who’d murdered other students….

Well, murder might not be necessary – the first poisoning could have been a prank, gone wrong or even gone right. Perhaps the parents were pushy and angry their child had been covered in boils for a class, resulting in the paperwork. That might make the teacher committing murder go very dark very fast, add seriousness to the whole tone, realism might not be altogether out. Might that make a better novel? He wished it was possible to get down all these treatments and try publishing them, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t done, multiple versions of the same story like that, different treatments….

He helped himself to hot chocolate as well while first considering all this and then remembering that if he ran with that idea he might now require permissions from Mary and might owe her a slice of any returns, which were hassles he’d rather not have to deal with if – when – he dipped his toes into the market again.

“Most of them, yes,” he said about Advanced Charms. “Half of them think it’s practical, and the rest think it’s an easy pass – until they get there, anyway,” he joked. He tried to make Charms fairly rigorous, but thought he must somehow be failing, as somehow, Kyte Collindale was doing unnervingly well, for him. Gray supposed the theory being removed from his lessons was helping somehow, but how had he taken to things like altering internal space so readily when some of the students who could actually say something coherent about how it worked and its relation to the Transfiguration theory of vanishing space had struggled? “Grading, though, that does get easier, the more you do it.” Mostly because it was fairly rare for schoolchildren to have any particularly insightful or original takes on the information; this was just a fact. He did always hold out some hope of someone writing something that made him laugh, though, and sometimes that did happen. “There’s only so many positions they can take on the ethics of cheering charms, you know? I’d guess it’s the same in Potions, but you’d know better than me.”

16 Grayson Wright Hm, to each their own I suppose. 113 Grayson Wright 0 5

Mary Brooding

September 15, 2018 7:43 PM

Isn't preference just the loveliest thing? by Mary Brooding

The way Professor Wright spoke about his students made Mary feel like he'd been teaching them for a very long time. She thought it best not to laugh when he was clearly feeling so grumpy towards them, but he seemed so friendly that it was hard to imagine him even irritated. He was, after all, standing in the staff room to chat with her and enjoy some snacks, when he'd likely expected only to find some privacy instead.

"I'm not particularly good at Charms myself," Mary admitted, "I never quite understood how people thought it was easy! But you're right, once they start, they usually see their mistake." She remembered taking Charms and being utterly convinced she would be just as well off with a tree branch in her hand as her own wand half the time. Transfiguration she could do. Charms? Not to save her life. Although she'd learned the fire-lighting charm well as it was very helpful for fireplaces on snowy days, heating hot chocolate, and of course, for lighting the flames beneath a cauldron.

"It's funny you comment on that, I actually just had a lesson where we discussed the ethics of using potion to induce euphoria in those who were recovering from a love potion," Mary remembered. It was only half the point, as they had been more focused on how to keep the person from ailing than anything else, but the topic had come up and Mary was excited to have something in common.

"I've noticed a few students seem eager to learn about and discuss ethics and some seem utterly bored by it. Do you often have students pulling pranks in your classes?" She thought of one of the Miss Brockerts, whom she'd recently caught trying to make a poisoned meal in class. Mary grimaced. "I'm not sure if poison counts as a prank, but we certainly get a slew of issues in that class."

She laughed, hoping to set the discussion more at ease. "I don't envy the Heads of Houses for having to worry about some of those issues even more often."

22 Mary Brooding Isn't preference just the loveliest thing? 1424 Mary Brooding 0 5

Grayson Wright

September 17, 2018 2:50 PM

I'm not sure it has a physical appearance. by Grayson Wright

Gray thought about the issue of whether or not Charms is easy. “I think the…basic reason, I guess – Charms, there’s usually only changing one or two qualities of something – at least for their first few years, then we get them to Advanced, then, well – but most of the time, before that. And there’s more room for individual expression than you have in – well, Potions, for example,” he added with a smile. “You have to be careful with how you phrase a spell, but any fifth year can customize locomotive charms without much trouble, you know, if they’re moving something heavy and need a little more focus. Potions, you have to be more fiddly with it.”

Precise academic language, that, he thought. He had never been good at speechifying. He prepared his lessons carefully, breaking up his speeches and whatnot, just so he didn’t start to loop around, or lapse back into the stammering he had been prone to in his school days.

Euphoria on top of a love potion seemed like a bad idea to him, but then, he’d never had a love potion. He often wondered what that would be like, though. Aladren tendencies, he supposed, though he couldn’t say he was comfortable with the idea of running the experiment even for the sake of learning something. For one thing, it would involve another person, and might make him a danger to said other person – an idea he regarded with utter revulsion – and for another, he…just wasn’t comfortable with the idea. More Aladren tendencies of another sort, he supposed – there was always a slight distance between him and other people, and he preferred it that way. He liked talking to people, working with people, having friends, would have even liked a better relationship with his parents – but he had a strong sense of himself as a distinct individual and of other people as distinct individuals and the idea of messing too much with thoughts and feelings just made his skin crawl.

It was not, however, the only thing that could have that effect. He stared blankly at Mary for a moment in surprise. “I – I would not think of it that way,” he said in response to the idea of poison as a prank. “Though – I guess it depends what kind. We get some pranks in Charms, but – it would be really difficult to kill anyone accidentally. Poison? Who was this and what did they do?” he asked, already thinking that he was probably overreacting – that it was probably a technical term and no-one had ever been in real danger – but he was a writer – had been a writer – and he had just been thinking about students and teachers murdering each other and the story potential in that and it was a slightly eerie coincidence.

He took a sip of his hot chocolate and nodded as Mary sympathized with the Heads of Houses. “Nor I,” he said.

16 Grayson Wright I'm not sure it has a physical appearance. 113 Grayson Wright 0 5