fandomhigh | Public Speaking, Class 2 (Wednesday, January 15)

Richie was waiting at his desk when everyone arrived, working his way through an insanely large coffee. There was a very large box of Twinkies on the front of the desk.

"Good morning," he said with a grin. "If anyone wants a Twinkie, grab one when you sign in. I, um, bought a lot of junk food this weekend, and I can't look at it anymore."

"This week, we're going to talk about interviewing," he continued. "Mostly, because it's fun, but it's also important. When you're interviewing, you want to make sure that, well, you're in control. If you're being broadcast live, make sure that either you have very laid-back producers, or that you don't ask questions you don't already know the answers to." Richie laughed. "Seriously, though-- always try and have a delay. We'll talk about slander later this semester, but it's always bad form to allow really untrue comments on the air. You want to get the story, not to be part of it. And profanity and crude language is usually frowned on."

"Right now, we're going to focus on getting information out of your subject. Most of the time, when you're doing interviews, the subject will not want to talk to you. Or they'll want to tell you how awesome their cd is, but they'll completely leave out that they were just hit with their second paternity suit in a week," Richie said. "Of course, you don't care about the cd, you want to know about the baby, the baby's mom, and if there are any more surprises for the public."

"Partner up, and take turns interviewing each other. You could lie or make up stories, if you'd like. But what I'm looking for is a solid interview--try and get answers, even if they're lies, that sound substantial. More of a "I killed a man yesterday" than "I made a bad decision". ~~Handwavey~~Homework is to hand in a brief summary of how it went."

"Next week, I'm going to show you just how badly interviews can go, so be happy that no one is supposed to be throwing furniture this week."

Richie paused, knowing he was forgetting something. "Seriously, people, eat the Twinkies, or I'll get as fat as I was on Saturday. Oh, and Turtle is the class TA, so if you have any questions, please bother her."

(OCD is ~~coming~~ up!)

((EDIT--On a side note, if anyone doesn't want to pair up for interviewing, feel free to 'take the assignment home' and 'interview' someone else. Richie fully believes in slacking. If you hand in a 'I interviewed my cat and he said I need to feed him more often,' you'll get credit. I just realized it might be inconvenient for some people to have to pair up.))

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Turtle snorted a little. "Not at all," she said, shaking her head as she made a few more notes. "In fact, I feel that's an interest that should be addressed more, parents wanting their daughters to marry toady stupid men. Granted, I didn't have to deal with it. My mother thinks I'm absolutely hopeless. But my sister did. I finally convinced her to go back to school instead of marrying him. I guess that would kind of be, like, the my-world equivalent of walking into a den of dragons in your world."

There was a slight pause.

"I thought dragons ate princesses, sometimes. Weren't you worried about that?"

"They don't." Cimorene said grumpily. "That's just a story by hysterical princesses. And I found a spell to make myself fire-proof, so that problem is taken care of as well. My sisters were all very happy to marry men who would take care of them." Her eye roll summarized her opinion of that. "I'm the youngest and I'm sure my parents thought I was hopeless as well. I kept wanting to actually learn things."

Turtle gave an overdramatic gasp of mock offense. "Learn things?" she declared, scandalized, but with a grin breaking through, "How dare you?"

And then she shook her head. "Parents are so lame sometimes."

"I know!" Cimorene's eyes went wide with fake shock, but she was trying not to burst out laughing. "And it's not only my parents. Almost all the princesses I ever met were completely happy to just marry whom ever their parents picked out and dance around in their frouffy dresses, and scream properly when being kidnapped by giants."

"Ugh," Turtle's face twisted in disgust as she made a few more notes, one of them including how she definitely liked Cimorene. "I'd kick them any giants who'd tried to kidnap me. Right in the shins. I'm too busy to deal with being kidnapped."

"Giants are kind of ... big." Cimorene pointed out, amused by the image of Turtle kicking a giant. It should also be mentioned that Cimorene herself was in a dress. But not in a frouffy one. "My line is usually 'I'm too busy to deal with being rescued.' It takes the knight/prince/whatever a while to figure out what I mean."

Like Turtle was going to let something like big stop her. She smirked a little. "Too busy to deal with being rescued," she repeated, scribbling it down as one might a quote for a newspaper interview, and she quirked her head slightly. "Care to elaborate? Is it just something witty to say, or would you believe there actually is a lot of pain and hassle in the rescuing process as a whole?"

"Not witty, honest. I had work to do, arguing about being rescued took up time that I could have been organizing the library or researching spells. And I didn't want to be rescued, I was quite happy where I was, thank you very much."

Turtle nodded a little thoughtfully, looking over her notes. She was quiet for a second, perhaps to merely catch her breath, before she asks, "Do dragons actually read a lot?"

Cimorene nodded. "Kazul does, at least. It's like with people, only slightly more likely to read a lot. She used to read a lot more pleasure before becoming King of the Dragons."

"Are they large books?" Turtle asked, tilting her head. "I imagine it could be hard for a dragon to turn a page. I mean, unless that's one of the expected tasks of a kidnapped princess?"

"No. I mean, maybe there's some old dragons who need help, but I don't see them going out and kidnapping princesses if they can't even turn book pages..." Cimorene mused. "And they're regular sized books. They're used to it. Do I get to interview you?"

"Are they...not very big dragons, then?" Turtle asked, because she was still stuck on trying to picture a giant dragon with a claw the size of...her turning a page the size of her notebook. It just wasn't happening. Her nose wrinkled. "And, yeah, I guess you could. Or should. We are probably supposed to interview each other..."

That was pretty much what it looked like. Cimorene had gapped for a few minutes when she saw it. "All right. So...what's your sister studying now?"

"Medicine," Turtle answered, straightening a little and nodding with pride. "She was going to go into medical school, and actually did for a bit, but then my mother convinced her to drop out so she could get married. Which is just ridiculous."

"It is." Cimorene agreed. "What about you?"

"I plan to go to law school, myself," Turtle said with a confident nod. "I want to be the world's greatest lawyer by the time I'm 25."

"Ambitious." Cimorene commented. "What kind of law?"

Cimorene didn't even know the half of it. "Business law," Turtle specified with a nod. "I'm very good at it, too."

Public Speaking, Class 2 (Wednesday, January 15)

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