Julian Umland
July 17, 2015 10:58 AM
Book Club Halloween Party! by Julian Umland
Christmas and the end of the year were the traditional time for book club parties, but Julian had decided, as it was her last year and she really had very little to lose by doing so, to have a little fun with Halloween, too. Thematic sweets – a roulade of spiced pumpkin pastry with cream cheese filling supplemented by sugar cookies iced to look like bats and jak-o-lanterns and bubbling cauldrons, chocolates shaped like little broomsticks that were flying around the tops of deep bowls that chocolate frogs were trying, without success, to jump out of, and a bowl of plain candy corn – had been a given, but Julian had also suggested that anyone who wished to do so dress up for the occasion when she set a seasonal theme for the part actually involving books, too, asking everyone to bring a favorite story along.She hadn’t had much trouble finding one of those for herself, taking far more time with her costume. It had taken a few tries to get it right, but now, her blue dress had its full skirt held out as though she had a petticoat and she had managed to lower the neckline and shorten the sleeves. Her hair had been curled, pinned, and set until it was up to just above her collar and almost looked like a natural mid-length bob. All this was accessorized with a double strand of fake pearls, glitzy costume earrings, pumps, and, just for the fun of it, drawn-on stocking seams.
How accurate to the suggested time period the whole was, she had no idea. The library’s resources really weren’t intended for easily locating information about which fifties hairstyles went with which fifties dress styles or when stocking rationing had ended back home. The point, though, was that she’d made it obvious she wasn’t in everyday things without having to commit to a specific fictional character or more elaborate archetype, something which would have been much harder to pull off with the resources she had. It was just for fun. Mostly. Maybe it was also a little intended to defy whoever had written on the board by blatantly not being herself in the offending room – no matter how many times she told herself that it was stupid, she couldn’t stop regarding it all as taunts aimed at her – but mostly it was just for fun.
“Hello, everyone,” she said cheerily as people began to enter the Transfiguration classroom. Her feet were already beginning to hurt. She ignored them as she continued to push desks into a large circle, aided by John, who she had coaxed into a fedora and his rain jacket in a vague (very vague, possibly even vaguer than her own resemblance to a young Liz Taylor, but she’d take what she could get; if her own brother didn’t go to some efforts to back up her ideas, she’d look stupid, whereas if he did and nobody else went along, they’d at least look stupid together and as a bonus he’d probably look stupider than she did) tribute to Bogart. “Feel free to get some snacks and then we’ll get started.”
Said snacks obtained and everyone seated, Julian took her own place. “So. First thing, I thought anyone who wants to – “ she wasn’t going to force people to talk more than they wanted to; being in a book club implied most of them at least didn’t find talking about books onerous, but there were different levels of participation and interest in specific projects and they weren’t being graded on the quality of their discussions or even whether or not they read the material – “could tell us about your favorite stories where people are in disguise, like some of us are this evening. I’ll keep a list of titles and authors in case anyone wants to look something up later and start the telling now.”
She had picked Walking Shadows, one of the more notable achievements of a relatively obscure Canadian half-blood author. It consisted, mostly, of bits and pieces of plot from King Lear and Macbeth (the plot elements in question were, admittedly, nigh-universal, her brother Paul had written a rather funny thing once about a support group for the resentful and/or homicidal younger brothers of fiction, but the lead was named Edgar and one of the supporting characters during his travels was his godfather’s ghost which was having trouble adjusting to having been murdered by its son-in-law) transplanted into the seventies and Canadian geography. She privately thought it was a little heavy on the political commentary, especially near the end, and found Edgar’s whining about the relationship between what he did with his powers to conceal his true identity and who he was underneath some charms and potions a bit pretentious, but it met the criteria and hopefully sounded politically neutral enough the way she described it in two minutes. Anyone who actually sought it out and read it might have trouble missing even the discussion of the traditional roles of pureblood women, much less the implications in the hundred or so pages Edgar, a pureblood from Nova Scotia, spent pretending to be a Muggleborn from New Brunswick while hiding out in Quebec, but that was a good reason for picking a relatively obscure Canadian half-blood writing about other Canadian wizards.
After everyone who wanted to share had, to further the theme, she’d set up for charades, where everyone who wanted to drew a character from something the group had read so far this year and tried to do an impression of that character for everyone else to guess at, splitting into two groups if more than ten people came to the meeting. If that finished early, she was content to let the members mix and talk under her supervision until time to shoo them all out for curfew, if any stayed that long.
Subthreads: Not many complaints here. by Laila Kennedy
The past is your future! by Clark Dill
<i>Cavern of Children</i> by Barnaby Pye
Little Re(a)d by Ava Fletcher
16
Julian Umland
Book Club Halloween Party!
254
Julian Umland
1
5
Laila Kennedy
July 19, 2015 6:44 PM
Not many complaints here. by Laila Kennedy
Laila had been excited when she’d received Julian’s Book Club Halloween Party note. Halloween, it seemed, was one of those things that Mr. Xavier had mentioned that was similar in both world. Growing up, her mother had never been a huge fan of the holiday but had permitted Laila and her brother to dress up and go trick or treating and participate in the other festive events around town because it was Turner’s Point tradition and their father had said it was okay. It was an odd sort of thing, Laila thought. One never knew what was going to set off her mother and what wasn’t. Halloween was one of those things that Loretta didn’t necessarily trust and had an inherent superstition towards but because she also understood needing to show the townspeople that she was one of them, it was one of the things she had to let go of and allow her children to do.However, unlike a lot of the other things that Laila’s mother insisted upon their doing, Halloween was one that Laila and her brother had always really enjoyed. It was a time where they could kind of goof off and not really worry about what the town was thinking of them (for once) because that was what they were supposed to do. Unfortunately, she had not brought anything to school with her with the idea in mind that she would be needing a Halloween costume. Had she still been a muggle, which was what these people called normal people like her family, she might have donned a black cloak and hat and been a witch, but now she wondered if that would even appear as a costume to these wizards to whom witch-wear seemed to be a regular choice of clothing for both males and females. So Laila was a little stumped.
When the day rolled around, though, she had managed to string together a couple odds and ends in the art room to create a tooth fairy costume. The tooth fairy was a story her mom liked to pretend didn’t exist and her dad insisted did, and Laila had seen many pictures of it in children’s books, so she had to wonder if the tooth fairy really did exist—certainly magic appeared to, perhaps the tooth fairy was just extra, extra secretive. Nevertheless, when she showed up to the Halloween party, she was wearing a light blue summer dress that she had (after a long search for a stapler) sewn large paper teeth onto and a headband which she had similarly attached a cutely drawn premolar with something called “spell-o-tape” which appeared to be the magical version of scotch tape. Pleased with herself, Laila had also managed to cut out two very large paper wings and “spell-o-taped” then to the back of her dress, using a couple very roughly done stitches to make sure it held, grateful that her mother had insisted upon her learning how to at least sew up a hole the previous year.
Laila was amazed with the array of food, impressed with how Julian had managed to make all of it when school and homework took up such a large portion of the day, and was even more excited to see how the different types of food were charmed to move about the table. She didn’t think she was going to eat one of the chocolate frogs as they kind of creeped her out, but she helped herself to a jack-o-lantern shaped cookie and a slice of roulade, happily putting a couple candy corns on her plate as well. Sticking to what she knew best seemed to be a common theme when it came to life at Sonora and even though Laila sometimes felt bad for not being more adventurous, her mother’s cautioning words about falling too far always echoed in the back of her head, keeping her from fully breaking into the world that she had been thrust into after being told she was a wizard.
Julian’s assignment that they all come with a book to share about someone who was in disguise was fun for Laila to do. Her father loved old time detective movies and so she had searched the library for a book that fit that criteria, ‘hard-boiled’ her father had said when she’d asked him what his favorite kind of book was. Laila remembered not understanding the term at first, wondering why anyone would want a hard-boiled book since hard-boiled eggs smelled so nasty, but he had explained that the term ‘hard-boiled’ when it came to books was meant to describe the sort of story in which there was a cynical guy (“what’s cynical?” she had asked) who had to solve some sort of mystery in a dangerous situation. In reality the genre was much more complicated than that, but it was a sufficient explanation for a little girl who at the time had been so young she couldn’t even read herself.
The search, however, had been the most fun part of finding a book to share because as Laila tried to read the ‘hard-boiled’ wizard novel entitled The Maltese Griffin she had been all turned around and confused as to how anyone could create something so raunchy! Her cheeks had been bright red by the time she had finished the book and so as Julian asked them to share, she fidgeted on the edge of her seat, fingers playing with the paper teeth that had been spell-o-taped around her wand to make it look like it might be the tooth fairy’s versus a wizard’s. She bashfully hid her face to let someone else go first, wondering just how much into detail she really ought to go into the story about drugs, murder, and sex.
10
Laila Kennedy
Not many complaints here.
318
Laila Kennedy
0
5
Clark Dill
July 23, 2015 12:50 PM
The past is your future! by Clark Dill
Now halfway though his Sonora years, Clark's ability to create an awesome costume was much improved. The transfigurations and charms he used for most of the effects were only temporary but, like Cinderella's dress, it really only needed to last the evening. As long as he was back in his room by curfew - and nobody had the horrible idea to cast a finite spell in his direction - it should survive the Book Club party anyway.He had put a fair amount of thought into his costume, probably more than was entirely normal. He'd wanted to do something from science fiction, as that was his favorite genre in general but it was also particularly well suited to inspiring iconic costumes. He had seriously considered Boba Fett and gotten as far as transfiguring an excellent replica of his helmet out of an old metal pail an elf had produced upon his request, but then he decided too few people would recognize it here, and the helmet might make it hard to hear other people during the book discussions. Darth Vader and storm troopers would have similar drawbacks.
He considered a Star Trek officer, but again, purebloods wouldn't understand and he wasn't sure he could explain. Theodore hadn't even known muggles had left Earth's atmosphere on real space missions. The concept of galaxy exploration might break someone's brain, and Clark didn't want that on his conscience.
So he turned to a different niche of the science fiction genre: time travel. Wizards had time turners so this was closer to reality to them than it was to muggles. He'd even found a fictional book in the library called The Time Wizard which had nearly made him squeal like a fanboy when he realized magical people did write something almost recognizable as science fiction. Needless to say, that was his book for the party's read and tell activity. Time travelers, after all, used disguises frequently to blend into the time period they were visiting.
Obviously, for his costume, the most famous time traveller was Doctor Who. But he had a space element to his travels, too, so eventually Clark had decided to go as someone else.
Walking into the party with The Time Wizard tucked under one arm, Clark's normally blond hair had been lightened even more to pure white and lengthened by several inches. A charm made it stand out as far from his skull as it possibly could and frizz wildly - an effect electrocution would have replicated perfectly according to Hollywood, but the charm was much safer and less painful. Clark's white lab coat would return to life as a boring school robe later tonight but for now it looked singed and stained and well used by someone who wasn't as adverse to electrocution as Clark was. The button down shirt beneath it was eccentrically wild and colorful, and Clark had been tempted to make some of the designs move, because he thought that would fit the character, but he was playing a muggle, so he reluctantly kept the patterns stationary. His pants were just a normal pair of khakis he might wear to class.
Make-up charms were not really his forte, but he'd found some to wrinkle and age his skin in a book about costume cosmetics. His facial features were all wrong, but he hadn't figured out how to adjust those without risking permanent disfiguration, so they remained recognizably Clark's. Thick yellow gloves, round black goggles, and a large clip on his breast pocket rounded out his accessories, and he made sure the first thing he did was stagger back away from the bowl of chocolate frogs and exclaim, "Great Scot! It worked better than I expected!"
He thought anyone who had even seen a parody of Back to the Future should recognize Doc Brown, and everyone else would likely be able to at least identify the Insane Experimenter archetype.
Popping a chocolate frog in his mouth and grabbing a handful of candy corn to munch on, Clark joined everyone else when Julian called the meeting to order.
When it was his turn, he held up the copy of the book he'd brought with him and said, "I've got The Time Wizard, which can be checked out of the fiction section of our library here. It's a decent exploration of what might happen if a wizard figured out how to alter a time turner to move significantly further back in time than a few hours. The main character here figured out how to make his send him back a century per turn - that part is kind of glossed over and not explained well, but the magical breakthrough isn't the point of the book. The focus is what he does with it. And what he does is take some trips into the past, where he tries to blend in with his new time period and see what life was really like back then. It's written by a college professor of History, so the period details are really plentiful and accurate so far as I can tell. Of course, the hero runs into a dilemma, as all time travelers do, where he needs to decide between preventing something terrible that happened and preserving his own time line, but I won't say what happened exactly in case anyone wants to read it, because that would ruin the ending. I'll just say it was well done and the author has a good grasp on cause and effect that too many time travel writers lack. Word of warning to anyone who hasn't read this kind of story before: It will make your brain hurt; all good time journeys do. So that was The Time Wizard, by Scofield Drum." He showed off the book again so anyone interested in borrowing it might recognize the cover.
1
Clark Dill
The past is your future!
277
Clark Dill
0
5
Barnaby Pye
July 28, 2015 5:16 PM
<i>Cavern of Children</i> by Barnaby Pye
To be quite honest, Barnaby didn’t like costumes. Because of this, he thought Halloween was probably one of the stupidest holidays of the year. Halloween was a time in which females could dress in some skanky-ass (normally Barnaby didn’t enjoy speaking in such crude words but ever since he had gotten old enough to realize that his mother and her friends were exactly the sort of “woo girls” who liked to wear those kinds of costumes that had been the term for it and there was no going back). As such, when Julian Umland, someone who he had previously thought to be one of the reasonable sort of female whose presence he could tolerate said that the Halloween book club would be in costume, he didn’t really know what to do.Did he show up in costume and make a ridiculous fool out of himself? Or did he show up out of costume and risk the exact same thing? He had never once had the desire in his entire life to dress up as someone else—why would he, when being himself was so great? Alfie had stopped to that level at Hogwarts—he knew from photos of Alfie and his mates from Gryffindor wearing odd combinations of Muggle clothing hugging equally bizarrely dressed witches, under aged bottles of fire whiskey perched on the tables behind them.
In the end, he almost didn’t go, but skipping a day of book club—one of the three activities at school he actually enjoyed, the other two being Science Club and Library Assistant, just was out of the question and so he reluctantly dressed in all black, and looked up a spell in the library that would elongated his canine teeth. The result was a convincing vampire impression, especially when his eternally grumpy face was taken into equation—though the perfectly round spectacles that he always wore kind of threw it off and made him look a little too serious. He was glad, as it turned out, that he had come as he greatly enjoyed sweets, it being one of his biggest weaknesses and he almost smiled as he put roulade and cookies (one of each shape because you know, if they tasted different as an academic it was his duty to experiment) and chocolates and candy corn on his plate and found a seat that no one was sitting next to yet.
As he waited for the club to start, he had a look around at the different costumes, his forehead puckering up in slight confusion at a couple of the costumes—one girl had covered herself in teeth and it was only a recollection at something his tutor had once said that had caused him to look up a reference book in the public library that allowed him to know she was dressed as the strange muggle…tooth fairy, an odd job that apparently collected muggle children’s teeth. The other ones he didn’t quite understand at all and chalked up the indoor raincoat, fluffy blue dress, and strange wig up to classmate insanity, slightly pleased that even though he’d dressed up it was simple enough and he hadn’t looked like a complete weirdo when walking to the Transfiguration classroom.
What Barnaby didn’t realize, was that he looked more normal in his vampire costume than his daily wear which generally consisted of clothes of the “professional” variety, khaki trousers, button up shirts, and sweaters (of the sleeved and vest variety). The effect of this, with his neatly combed hair that sometimes stuck up if he’d had a particularly long day in the library and his metal framed spectacles, was that he looked like a the personification of a great horned owl. When it was his turn, Barnaby held up the dusty book he had chosen. The cover was a dark green color with gold lettering on it that spelled out Cavern of Children and kind of glimmered a little. Even though they hadn’t been required to bring in a book, he had done so anyway since it was just a Barnaby thing to do.
“This was a war story to an extent,” Barnaby said as he passed the book around for the other members to see it. Normally he wouldn’t have allowed other people to touch one of his precious books, but costumes aside being in a book club gave the students around him a better reputation, one that perhaps lent them to being careful and not drastic even though one of the older members was the sort of person to walk around covered in paint all the time. “It’s set in an alternate universe in which the different blood types are fighting. The main character is a muggleborn who infiltrates the elitist camps and disguises himself as a senior officer and proceeds to take down entire regiments. It’s kind of hilarious because we all look the same on the outside so he really didn’t need to do much physical alterations, however he changed his manner of speaking and way of carrying himself and disguised his insides. The intrigue of it all are really the psychological games the main character plays with the other characters.”
10
Barnaby Pye
<i>Cavern of Children</i>
298
Barnaby Pye
0
5
Ava Fletcher
July 29, 2015 6:16 PM
Little Re(a)d by Ava Fletcher
Halloween, Ava had been told, had been one of her father’s favorite holidays. As such every year before she came to Sonora, in honor of that, she had stayed home with her grandfather instead of trick-or-treating, wrapped in one of his old shirts, watching his favorite Halloween-themed movies and eating caramel corn and hot sauce which was his favorite movie snack as weird as it was. She had done the same thing on his birthdays and anytime she missed him any more than the usual amount. However, since she had started at Sonora the tradition had become a little difficult since there were no televisions at school and so instead she had always celebrated a summer Halloween on July 31.Since televisions weren’t available, she had since switched to wearing his old clothes and reading his favorite books and had by now acquired a copy of all of them which she carried to and from school each year in her luggage. So, not wanting to part with tradition, Ava went to Julian’s book club dressed down in one of her favorites of her father’s shirts, a cozy over-sized flannel with which she wore leggings (because she could not abide overly large pants and some of his old, wool socks. In addition to this she charmed a false mustache out of some of the hair in her hairbrush and a fake ax out of the remaining hairbrush and went to the book club as a lumber jack.
She met her friends in the common room so that they could walk over to the transfiguration classroom together, asking them if they liked her mustache very much, she made it herself! When they arrive, Ava was excited to see all the treats Julian had laid out for them and helped herself to a few before thanking Julian and looking for a place to sit down. She really couldn’t wait to get started on the roulade that Julian had brought. The smell of the pumpkin always brought her back to her grandparents kitchen back when her grandmother was still alive and she still lived with both her parents. Before she died, Grandma had always made a really fantastic Halloween dinner complete with a pumpkin pie before Ava went trick-or-treating with her dad who would always dress up in a complementary costume to Ava. One year, that last year, Ava remembered dressing as a stereotypical Muggle witch against her mother’s wishes and her father had gone as her black cat familiar, complete with little whiskers painted onto his face.
Ava smiled wistfully and took a large bite, letting the pumpkin spice and the cream cheese take over her senses. It was always the strangest things that allowed her to time travel back to before things had gotten complicated. She supposed she understood it because memory was something that could be dictated by senses, but it was still confusing all the same. It was like how every time she heard Renaissance style music she thought about Demitri and what might have been. She still missed him frequently, wondering what he was up to and the like, and now that she was older and knew better she supposed she had had a tiny crush on him, but now she was older and knew better and didn’t believe in love really.
Bitterness does not suit you, Ava, she said to herself and put any thought of Dimitri or Demetre all the same out of her mind as it came to being her turn to share. “Well,” she said with a grin. “The story I have to tell you for today is this. Once upon a time there was a little girl who was beloved by everyone. She was known as Little Red Riding Hood because of the red riding hood that her grandmother had made for her. One day her mother said to her ‘Take this little pot of jam and this little loaf of bread to your grandmother who lives in the woods.’ Being the good, obedient little girl that she was, Little Red took a basket and the little pot of jam and the little loaf of bread and went on her way. As she stepped outside, her mother said to her; ‘And be careful to stay on the path and not to talk to strangers.’
“‘I promise,’ said Little Red, and went on her way. It was not long before she arrived in the woods and saw beautiful flowers. She stopped a moment to stare at them longingly, but she heeded her mothers warning and before long continued on her way. Little did Little Red know, but there was a wolf in those woods who made a habit of eating little girls right up and,” here Ava paused dramatically, licking her lips like the wolf. “Her red cape made her the perfect little target, the ultimate vision of innocence. The wolf saw how the little girl wanted the flowers and bent down to pick a bouquet. Because of his long legs, he quickly caught up to Little Red and handed her the bouquet.
“When Little Red looked up, she saw the large eyes of the wolf and she jumped back, frightened. ‘It’s okay little girl,’ he said with a toothy grin, ‘You can trust me, I’m a friend.’ Little Red hesitantly accepted the flowers and the wolf grinned even larger. ‘Where are you going today?’ Little Red bit her lip, unsure if she should answer his question, but the wolf looked so unexpectedly harmless that eventually she gave in and told him ‘to my grandmother’s to bring her this little pot of jam and this little loaf of bread.’ ‘What a good, dutiful granddaughter you are,’ the wolf said. ‘I’ll let you go on your way. Are you going to take the path of needles, or the path of pins?’
“Little Red hesitated before saying that she would take the path of needles and the wolf bowed low, waiting until she was well on her way before taking the path of pins and running as fast as he could towards the little old woman’s cottage. When he got there, he knocked on the door and imitated Little Red’s voice for the wolf was quite good at impersonations. The old woman allowed the wolf to come in and when he did, he slit her throat and gobbled her up, clothes and all save for her cap which had fallen off when she shrieked in fright. The wolf found another dressing gown and put it on before hopping into bed and curling up under the covers.
“Before too long, Little Red came knocking. ‘Come in,’ the wolf said, imitating the grandmother’s voice. Little Red came in. ‘I brought you a little pot of jam and a little loaf of bread, Grandmother,’ she said, setting the basket on the table. The wolf grinned, but Little Red couldn’t see that because his face was hidden by the curtains around the bed. ‘There is some wine on the table and some meat in a bowl,’ he said. ‘Have some.’ And Little Red obediently poured herself a glass and ate some of the meat wrinkling her nose at the strange taste. There was a little cat there that said to her ‘a slut is she who eats the flesh and drinks the blood of her grandmother!.’
“‘Undress and come into bed,’ the wolf said, beckoning her closer. Little Red approached. ‘Where should I put my cloak?’ she asked. ‘Throw it in the fire, you won’t be needing that any more.’ Little Red obeyed. ‘And what of my dress?’ she asked. ‘Throw it in the fire, you won’t be needing that anymore.’ Little Red obeyed. One after another she removed the rest of her clothes and threw them in the fire until all she had on were her stockings which she obligingly threw in the fire as well. Now, she climbed into bed and her eyes grew wide. ‘What big eyes you have, Grandmother,’ she said. ‘The better to see you with my dear,’ the wolf cackled.
“‘What big ears you have, Grandmother,’ she said. ‘The better to hear you with my dear,’ the wolf grinned. ‘Grandmother,’ she said as she looked at the wolf’s teeth thinking what big teeth he had. ‘I have to make caca.’ The wolf sighed but allowed her to go outside, tying a bit of rope around her leg so that she could not get away. Now, after awhile the wolf was getting rather worried, because Little Red had looked so very delicious and he desperately wanted to eat her up, so he pulled on the string and said, ‘are you, are you nearly done?’ But there was no response, so the wolf got out of bed and walked out to see that Little Red had tied the rope around the pear tree in the front yard and run clean away.”
OOC: As Ava’s grandfather is a fairy tale buff, her version of fairy tales are kind of messed up because she has heard so many different versions. This particular Little Red Riding Hood story is a mash-up from the Charles Perrault and the 1997 short film starring Cristina Ricci but is mainly a retelling of the short film.
10
Ava Fletcher
Little Re(a)d
258
Ava Fletcher
0
5