Phil Carson
October 02, 2023 9:32 PM
Hey, Gwendolyn by Phil Carson
Phil loitered in the Aladren common room. He appeared to be scanning the bookshelves, but whenever he heard anyone new come in or out of the room, either by the girls' staircase, or by the secret passage that led out into the library, he'd turn to look who it was. Usually he gave the person a idle 'hi' if they happened to catch each other's eye, and then he'd return to perusing the shelf like he was looking for something specific and not finding it.He was looking for something specific, but she wasn't on the shelf. He did, however, figure she'd need to pass through here sooner or later.
Eventually, she did.
"Hi," he said, like he had to everyone else he'd seen but, this time, instead of returning his attention to the shelf, he abandoned it entirely and started walking over to her. "Oh! Gwendolyn," he continued, as if just remembering a question he'd been meaning to ask her, "there was something I was wondering you could help me out with."
As he reached normal conversation distance, he stopped, and a hand ran nervously through his hair, despite having told himself quite firmly that he wasn't supposed to look nervous when asking this. Maybe she'd wouldn't read it that way. "So, um," yeah, the verbal hesitations sounded incredibly confident, too. He'd rehearsed this. Over and over, while not reading the spines of the books over there on the shelf. Why couldn't he remember what he'd planned to say now? Gah.
"There's a ball," he said, and wanted to kick himself because of course Gwendolyn knew there was a ball. Everybody knew there was a ball. "And I'm a prefect." Not getting better, Phil, the unhelpful bit of his brain that was good at criticism but not offering constructive improvements put in. Way to make her feel special and wanted by drawing attention to the fact that you *need* a date. It did have a point, though.
"I mean," he backtracked, "Not that I wouldn't want to ask anyway." He really had had a clever proposal all worked out, with funny references to her superhero character in the gaming club campaign and everything. Was it really so hard for his brain to just offer that instead of deriding the stupid things that were coming out of his mouth instead? "But, um, do you want to go with me?" he finally just blurted out.
He would not blame her at all if she said no.
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Phil Carson
Hey, Gwendolyn
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Gwendolyn Brockert
October 04, 2023 11:15 PM
Hi Phil by Gwendolyn Brockert
The ball had been on Gwendolyn’s mind, mostly because it was something that people around her kept talking about. It was sort of like how third and fourth years ended up thinking about CATS, even though they had time before they had to take them, because they shared classes with fifth years who did have to take the tests this year and the professors enjoyed constantly reminding them of this fact. It definitely sucked to be a third year and have to do CATS review, when you had two more years before you had to take your CATS. Fortunately, you didn’t have to worry about forgetting it all before you actually had them yourself because they did review all over again your fourth and fifth years.This actually didn’t bother Gwendolyn that much beyond that she got sick of hearing about the exams that she didn’t even have to take. For others though, such as Lydia, it could trigger anxiety. Of course, it seemed like most things triggered her cousin’s anxiety and her anxiety was completely immune to logic and reason. Like Gwendolyn had pointed out how the Teppenpaw did fine academically and that she wasn’t planning to have a career so she didn’t need specific grades in order to do so. Lydia had freaked out anyway, probably because of how the professors stressed the importance of CATS. Still, all the Aladren could do though was be patient with her.
As for Gwendolyn, she wasn’t at all worried about taking the exams next year. She would need specific classes and grades in order to do what she wanted, which was to go into criminal psychology, but she…did really well academically and magically so she had no reason to doubt that she would do well on CATS too. Gwendolyn’s biggest issue was figuring out what classes that she would need to keep in order to go into that field of study. DADA probably and she’d keep Transfiguration for sure anyway.
Anyway, when it came to the Ball, she wasn’t all that worried either. Her younger sister had a date but Gwendolyn didn’t feel bad that Misty had a date and she didn’t. She was happy for her sister. Nor was she all that worried that she would stand around by herself all night since she had lots of people that she could hang out with. Either she could hang out with Lyla (and probably Samara and Robyn) like she had at the Bonfire last year or she could hang out with her Gaming Club friends.
Honestly, Gwendolyn felt lucky to have so many options. Some people didn’t, Or even if people would want to hang out with them, it was hard for people like her dad or Lydia to talk to people who they didn’t already know liked them.
Still, she had no expectations of the Ball beyond that. And so she had no inkling of what Phil could need help with when he asked her. Maybe something having to do with gaming as she assumed that if it had to do with CATS he’d ask Eben or one of the other fifth years.
However, when the older Aladren mentioned the Ball, she had a feeling she knew where this was going since she doubted that he was just reminding her for the sake of reminding her since it wasn’t as if anyone could forget the Ball was happening any more than Intermediate and Advanced students could forget about exams. You’d have to be living under a rock to miss that either was happening. Phil mentioning that he was a prefect also was a huge clue about what was coming next. “Of course I’ll go with you,” Gwendolyn replied, unable to keep herself from grinning. That actually sounded like a lot of fun as she did generally enjoy the fifth year’s company and while she would have been fine no matter what, it did feel really nice to be asked.
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Gwendolyn Brockert
Hi Phil
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Phil Carson
October 12, 2023 10:16 PM
We have now successfully greeted each other by Phil Carson
She said yes, and in fact she even seemed happy about it. Phil grinned back at her and even laughed a little in his relief. "Oh good, because I really hashed up that proposal. I had a whole funny lead in referencing Zephyra, and just completely forgot the whole thing. I'll tell you sometime once I remember it." Or maybe he would remember it, and it would sound stupid upon review, and he'd have to 'forget' it again. Maybe it was better for her to just imagine a funny ball proposal; whatever she came up with would probably be cleverer than anything he did anyway.So now he had a date. Which, cool. He'd never had a date before. But he wasn't quite sure where to go from here.
Obviously, standing there grinning like a loon was right out for his next step, but that was what he did while he wracked his brain for what that next step could be.
He guessed coordinating the date would be smart. "So, um, I'll meet you here in the common room, and we'll walk down together? I think I'm supposed to get you a corsage or something." At least that's what happened at muggle formal dances, and he didn't see why this would be different. "Do you know what color you're going to wear? My fancy robes are black, so that should go with anything, right?" He'd put in his order at Tumbleweed during their last trip, because fancy robes sounded both more awesome and less horrifically stuffy and uncomfortable than a fancy tuxedo, and that's what he'd get stuck with if he let either of his parents take him shopping for what was essentially going to be his prom.
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Phil Carson
We have now successfully greeted each other
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Gwendolyn Brockert
October 14, 2023 3:29 PM
Apparently we didn't crit fail. by Gwendolyn Brockert
Phil seemed sort of relieved about Gwendolyn’s response. Which made perfect sense to her, honestly. She couldn’t blame him, in his shoes, she would have felt the same way. After all, he was a prefect who needed someone to dance with and she was sure not having a partner for the opening dance would have been completely humiliating. In fact one of the best things about the Ball being your fourth year was that you wouldn’t have to worry about finding a date for it if you got prefect.And yes, you could opt out of the opening dance but people might wonder why. For some people, that was a powerful motivator. Gwendolyn was unsure if she was one of those people, since she didn’t exactly spend a lot of time worrying about what others thought of her like Dad or Lydia did but even if she got prefect next year it would never have to be a consideration.
Honestly, the fourth year didn’t quite understand why this tradition existed or why it even had to continue existing. After all, there were other things that had traditionally been one way and now they weren’t. Like Head Student. Until a few years ago, it had been one male student and one female student. Now it was gender neutral. Regardless of whether this was good, bad or neither, this was something that caused far less distress to people overall than the opening dance that the Head Students and prefects had to do. Like, people had to worry about the humiliation of not having anyone to dance with or even of not knowing how to dance. Or even of just being the focus of everyone’s attention which puts tremendous pressure on some people.
Although now Gwendolyn supposed she’d be in that position too, where she would be dancing in front of the entire school. However, she wasn’t really bothered by that since she mostly didn’t care about what everyone thought and wasn’t convinced that they all hated her, wanted her to fail and would mock her incessantly when she inevitably did. Or convinced of any of those things, including the inevitability of failure. After all, Gwendolyn did know how to dance. She was a Brockert whose mother was a ballerina, so of course she had learned how.
Still, she was happy to be able to spare Phil the humiliation of not having someone to dance with. “It’s fine. I actually didn’t really expect to be asked at all. I mean, there’s only so many options and I’m glad you asked me. It’ll honestly be more fun to have someone to hang out with.” Although Gwendolyn probably just would have hung out with Lyla and her other friends like at the Bonfire. She wouldn’t have been alone. It still felt really good to be asked to be someone’s date though. “My dress is red, so it shouldn’t clash then. Not that I was worried about that.” Somehow caring if your date’s robes and your dress matched struck her as kind of silly, like the sort of thing her cousin Arianna cared about, appearance based, and shallow not to mention overly type A and controlling.It would be pretty mean to reject someone for a date because their dress robes would clash with your dress and Gwendolyn could totally see her cousin doing exactly that. “Although obviously, if your robes are black it wouldn’t anyway.”
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Gwendolyn Brockert
Apparently we didn't crit fail.
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