Selina Skies

May 01, 2022 8:32 PM
There were only so many trips to Tumbleweed they could take before the novelty wore off, and Selina was pretty sure they had approached if not passed that limit. It was good for the sake of getting out of the school and seeing somewhere different. Occasionally it was also good for events, be they educational (when the ghosts put on a specific historical recreation), sporting (when the town hosted a Quidditch fair), or social (when it had a pop up market, especially in the run up to the ball). However, there was nothing that quite fit the bill coming up, and so they were branching out with a different school trip.

The trip had been announced a week or so into term. They would be going to a magical zoo, with entrance fees covered by the school. As it was a little further away, they would be travelling by portkey, and on the day of the trup, they made sure to give out some very effective anti-sickness medication to every student, just to be on the safe side.

Once they had all touched down, and everyone had had a chance to get their breath and their legs back and sip some water, Selina went over the rules, which had already been discussed at school.

“Alright, here are your maps. As you can see, the zoo is divided into sections. Much like we do in Tumbleweed, each staff member will be responsible for a section. You will be with a group that will go between different areas of the zoo. Once you are in a section, you will be allowed to split off so long as you stay in pairs, and stay within the section. Your staff member will let you know what time to meet them back at the gate of that area in order to move onto your next stop.

“There is a packet of worksheets here, with an activity for each section.” She had tried to make it both fun and educational, but was well aware that as an adult, she did not get to be the authority to label it such—at least, not the first one of those anyway. The activities ranged from completing a sketch of an animal in its environment, to fact-based scavenger hunts. She passed the packets around.

“Alright. Choose your group or partner, then choose a staff member to go with—please divide yourselves out roughly evenly. You will all get to see everything eventually, so it doesn’t really matter who you go with first. ”


OOC: Hello, and welcome to our school trip! As noted, although we're using the Tumbleweed board, we are not in Tumbleweed. 'Sections' would be big categories like birds, invertebrates, big mammals etc. Feel free to make up details about that and the content of the work packets.

You can claim a staff member for your group so long as it doesn't contradict anyone else, or leave it vague. If you need them, tag them, or ask in chatzy.

Have fun!
Subthreads:
13 Selina Skies Field Trip 26 1 5

Eben Sosna

May 20, 2022 6:29 PM
Magic field trips, in Eben's view, had a lot of things going for them. He'd had no interest in shopping for the Ball last year, but the location of the market had allowed for seeing a real abandoned Old West town full of ghosts, which he could hardly consider uncool. This year, they were going to the magic zoo, and that, too, had a lot of potential to be interesting, at least if his Care of Magical Creatures textbook was anything to go by. He'd been looking forward to the trip since it had been announced and was glad to be on it. Magic field trips were great. Getting to them, on the other hand....

Well, nobody had ever said wizards were perfect. That was why the introductions to some of the books mentioned that 'figure out better spells' was a legitimate job, kind of like the magic equivalent of being an engineer, he guessed. The mechanisms these guys used to travel could use some...refining. He'd put it on his to-do list for when he learned the interesting stuff reserved for the older students, and he added a reminder to it as he reached the zoo. He'd make a killing, become respected by at least magic smart people, and do a good deed all in one go, who could ask for more than that?

For now, he put his glasses back on carefully, managing to get them back over his nose without stabbing himself in the eye with the parts that hooked around his ears. This was not usually that much of an accomplishment, but wizard travel was...special in so many ways.

He forgot about that, though, as Professor Skies gave them worksheets (Eben tried to keep a straight face as he received his; in his old school, he'd found these kinds of activities really boring, but he'd gathered that it wasn't exactly the Aladren thing to do to admit disinterest in anything academic. For the first time in his life, he was, if not a Super Popular Cool Kid, at least not dealing with stuff like people playing keep-away with his glasses after stealing them off his head. For the first time in his life, therefore, he had a reason to care about fitting in, since his House seemed on the whole willing to let him do so and the rest of the school seemed at least mostly chill as well) and instructions. He rose on his toes, as though to look over the heads of taller students at the signs, and then noticed what he was doing and came back to the ground as the group started to fracture into mini-groups.

"Want to go look at magic birds?" he asked a likely partner enthusiastically.
16 Eben Sosna New game idea, Angry *Magic* Birds. 1538 0 5

Christopher Brockert

May 21, 2022 11:34 AM
OOC: CW-Brief mention of psychological abuse BIC:

Chris couldn’t help but be slightly worried about the trip to the zoo. Not the zoo part itself, which was cool and interesting and even the animals that would want to eat him, would be safely behind glass. In fact, Christopher generally preferred animals to people, if he really thought about it, because unless it was a dangerous thing that wanted to eat him, he probably wasn’t going to find one to be a source of conflict.

And even then, it wasn’t going to be one where he was judged or criticized or yelled at or mocked or bullied. In fact, said dangerous creature was arguably judging him in a fairly positive manner because being thought of as something tasty was something good. Chris thought pie was tasty, he had pleasant, positive feelings for pie.

Not that he wanted to be eaten of course.Pie existed to be eaten, the Crotalus did not. However, it was still better to be thought of as tasty than to be berated because he disliked Quidditch and wasn’t super macho. Or any of the other myriad of things that humans judged and criticized and fought with each other about, that was just the one he was most used to.

Anyway, the real issue about this whole field trip was that Chris was going to have to have a partner. Not that he exactly wanted to be alone anyway. If that had been an option and he took it, well, he’d look like that loser that nobody wanted to be around. He would be an object of mockery by his peers. Which of course was something that Christopher tried to avoid. Plus, even if nobody said anything or noticed, he’d still feel pretty bad about himself, and instead of enjoying the zoo and the break from the daily school routine, he’d have that horrible voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like Uncle Eustace’s telling him all the reasons why he was alone and had no friends.

Never mind that whenever the second year stopped to logically think about it, the reason that he didn’t have a lot of friends was that he was incredibly wary of anyone he didn’t know well, because of the psychological-he was just going to say it-abuse heaped upon him by his uncle. It was because of Uncle Eustace that Chris was afraid people were going to be unfriendly and by the time he realized otherwise, it was too late and everyone already had friends.

And therefore, he was worried that everyone would pair off and he would end up with someone awful. Of course, the people that the Crotalus would most want to avoid tended to, for some unfathomable reason,have a ton of friends. Also, fortunately, he could not think of anyone off the top of his head who was like his uncle but Chris was still at a place where he wasn’t completely sure of any of the first years, minus the ones in Teppenpaw, just because people like Uncle Eustace didn’t go into Teppenpaw.

Maybe he’d go find Verdillia. She seemed to like being around him.

However, before he could go find the other Crotalus, Eben Sosna approached him. “Sure.” Christopher replied. The Aladren seemed to be a perfectly nice person, and he certainly wasn’t going to be criticizing Chris for not being a jock given that the other second year seemed to be an eccentric nerd who his uncle would have likely beat up in school. Which was something that Chris definitely did not mean as an insult. In fact, it was something that made Ben a safe and therefore appealing person to pair off with
11 Christopher Brockert Not a fan of anything angry. How about just Magic Birds? 1539 0 5

Eben Sosna

May 28, 2022 12:55 PM
It still felt kind of weird, knowing the name of almost everyone around him, even if they hadn't ever really interacted much. Sure, the entire first year group was smaller than one class had been in Eben's old school, but he'd managed to spend an entire year before not knowing the names of everyone in his class. It baffled him that everyone he'd ever been in a class with had seemed to know exactly who he was, considering he didn't think he'd made any efforts to stand out in any way. He just did his work and then usually wanted to be left alone. What was so conspicuous about that?

That, though, was all in the past, and he knew everyone in first and second year, at least by sight. For the most part (admittedly with some help from the school's habit of labelling people on the fronts of their uniforms), he even knew more about people than just their names. Christopher Brockert, for instance, was in Crotalus and was a second year like him. He was in his House-and-year combo with two girls, and they all seemed to get along. In class, Christopher behaved himself enough that Eben wasn't too worried about being shoved facefirst into wherever the big cats did their business or anything today. This was all good, and so he was not displeased when his offer was accepted.

"Great," he said. "Are you any good at sketching?" he asked, looking at the worksheets for the bird section while walking that way. "It looks like we're gonna have to draw some differences between what the wings on one thing and another look like, somewhere in here, once we identify them."
16 Eben Sosna Eh, fair point, me, either. 1538 0 5

Christopher Brockert

May 30, 2022 5:35 PM
For just a moment, Chris almost panicked when his classmate asked him if he was good at sketching. Not because he wasn’t, but because he actually was. Or at least he thought that he was. Things that Chris sketched tended to look like what they were supposed to be and people had told him he was so it was not like, a matter of his own opinion. He wasn’t just being arrogant.

The thing was though that the Crotalus had often been mocked by Uncle Eustace for not just being good at drawing but for being interested in it too. For preferring to sketch or play with blocks than to play Quidditch.For being an artist rather than an athlete. Even though it was his uncle’s own actions that had made Chris have such an aversion to the sport.

Well, okay, he didn’t think that he would have otherwise been interested in playing it. However, Chris probably would not have the deep dislike and anxiety around it that he had. Or in this case, the fear of being judged as a sissy, a wimp, unmanly and other decidedly negative things because of his skill at and interest in drawing and dislike of doing anything athletic would not exist if not for Uncle Eustace.

However, he had to remind himself that most people were not like his uncle. Most people were not aggressive bullies who prized traditional masculinity and athleticism above all else. In fact, Chris did not even know anyone else who had such a skewed, nonsensical view of the world. Or at least not one that was skewed and nonsensical in the same way since, while the Crotalus did not know of any specific examples, people could have many different ways of seeing things that did not make sense to him. The point was that most people thought being artistic was a positive thing. They meant it as a compliment when they said he was good at drawing or building things.

Chris took a deep breath “I’ve been told that I’m not bad.” He admitted. He really did not think that Eben would start making fun of him. The Aladren did not seem like Uncle Eustace at all. He didn’t even play Quidditch. Still, Chris did not want to say that he was good at drawing because he didn’t want to sound like he was full of himself. Being humble was still important and anyway, he didn’t want to sound like he was some great artist and then fall short of his classmate’s expectations.

For what they needed though, he was sure that he would be fine “I think I can manage that.” Chris added.
11 Christopher Brockert Good 1539 0 5

Eben Sosna

June 07, 2022 12:17 PM
It...seemed that he had done a thing again, Eben decided, as he first waited for Christopher to respond to his question about sketching and the noticed how Christopher made his response. That wasn't good. When he did a thing in a conversation, it was usually a bad thing - he'd stepped on some tripwire or land mine or something in the conversation and triggered it, and now things were going to be explodey in his face probably.

The relative mildness of the responses was in odd contrast to how nervous the guy seemed about making them. What, did he think that he was expected to be on par with da Vinci or something if he answered in the affirmative? Eben could sort of understand that appeal of the basic idea - he was always frustrated when he couldn't do something as well as it could be done, too - but didn't get the nervousness. If anything, he'd always been told that it was sort of weird to hold himself to any standard at all, much less to expect it from anyone else - and he definitely didn't tend to expect as much out of other people as he did out of himself. Euan was pretty much the only person he thought could do a lot more than he really did; with other people, he...honestly didn't really think about the subject at all with most people. None of his business, was it?

"Cool," he said. "I'm...so-so or less, but I'm not sure we're going to be graded on how good the drawing is, anyway, as long as we can label it right. Ready to go, then?"
16 Eben Sosna So, what's the plot of the game going to be? 1538 0 5

Christopher Brockert

June 11, 2022 10:43 PM
Christopher breathed a sigh of relief at Eben’s response. He was glad that his classmate had not reacted in a negative way. Well, okay, so the Aladren wasn’t great at drawing, that was totally all right, both because Chris would never criticize a person for not being good at something, the way Uncle Eustace mocked him and Jasper for their lack of ability in Quidditch or Topaz would mock someone for not being as smart as she was-and she didn’t think that anyone was as smart as she was-and because Eben didn’t need to be good at drawing, because Christopher was good at drawing-and actually liked it, though blocks were his true favorite medium. Miles was the one with drawing and painting talent, although as the Crotalus was thirteen, he was going to be better at it than a six year old.

Still, this should not be a big deal. He was sure that something about his response had come across as weird and awkward and Christopher hated himself and his uncle both for it. He was not sure why he hated himself when it was Uncle Eustace’s fault, but he did anyway. He hated how it prevented him from making friends because he would inevitably make some social faux pas. Yeah, Eben wasn’t some pureblood that Chris had to impress or there would be dire consequences but he still generally wanted to be liked and now he had probably messed that up. His classmate probably thought that the Crotalus was a giant freak because he was so cautious that he even considered his words on what most would consider a minor matter.

And besides, even though Eben wasn’t a member of pureblood society, some day Christopher would have to talk to them without being so awkward, to make sure that he did not reflect poorly on the Brockert family name. So, it made sense to not be totally socially inept right now, to practice the ability to talk to others without being so strange, so…off.

Unfortunately, Christopher was just not sure how to do that, because of course he didn’t want to say the wrong thing but if he had to try and figure out what was and wasn’t safe for him to say, there would be this weird delay where he figured it out and that would be an issue. Especially considering what was acceptable varied from person to person. Some might think his artistic abilities were admirable and others…were Uncle Eustace. There were-unfortunately-other people like his uncle out there but Chris very much wanted to assume most people weren’t. Eben was not. Eben was an eccentric Aladren who was the sort of person Uncle Eustace would have bullied.

So, therefore Christopher should not have had a hard time saying he was a good artist. Yes, it was important to be modest about things but the larger problem here was that he was conditioned to be worried and anxious that someone else was going to mock him for his lack of masculinity and this conditioning was so ingrained in him that he had to force the logical part of his brain to override it. Which took a minute or two and made his response to someone else delayed a bit more than it should have been.

In other words, he hated Uncle Eustace so much So very, very much.

“Yeah, I think it’ll be fine.” Chris replied. It would be, because even if they were graded on how well something was drawn-which would arguably be overall unfair-he actually was good at drawing. “Ready.” The Crotalus started off towards the bird section.
11 Christopher Brockert Hm...something with Diricrawls? 1539 0 5