Tropes and Scope [Class 7, Period Three]

[bookworm-beauty.livejournal.com]

"Good morning!" Belle chirped, and when students walked in, they would find themselves in an ordinary-looking bookstore. (Belle could have gone with pretty much any setting, but, well, she had her biases.) "Today, I thought that in honor of our upcoming dance this weekend, we could talk a little about trends in fiction having to do with romance." She smiled, and added, "Or, less intimidatingly, dating, since I imagine many of you will be taking an escort with you."

"The thing about writing any genre is that there are certain established rules. If the audience finds whatever absurd situation you've set up to be romantic, then it doesn't matter if it would work in real life. Take, for example, how often in fiction young ingenues fall in love with their evil captors, who are really good inside." All said without a trace of irony, though she did add, "I've seen it happen in my own life, and it happens, but it's unlikely for most cases."

"Then we have things like how a held gaze can electrify the audience reading or viewing the couple...when in real life, it would probably make you kind of uncomfortable. Or a grand gesture, which directly contrasts the idea that money can't buy love."

"However." She turned her attention to the class. "At your age, the dating is more important." Shh, Belle, you're not much older than your students. "There's the blind date, which is similar to something they do in town, I think. There's the question of saying you love someone, which can apparently hit a little too soon, in dating." She wouldn't know. She was a Disney princess. "There's the question of whether something is or is not a date in the first place, which I'm sure will be the case with many of you taking friends this weekend."

Belle gestured behind her to the piles of precariously stacked books, the shelves of common interests, the coffee cart where things could be spilled. "Today we're going to talk about meeting cute. This is a way to introduce two characters in an unlikely, charming fashion." She clapped her hands together once, smiling, and added, "I'd like you to pair up and, using the materials around you which you may absolutely mod, 'meet cute.'" Did Belle secretly hope she might be setting up some Homecoming dates? Shh, maybe.

Reserves Meeting, Danger Shop, Thursday Afternoon (After Classes)

[glacial_queen]

The members of the Reserves had been handwavily notified to meet in the Danger Shop for today's meeting. Regretfully, this did mean no food or drinks for yet another week, but there was a lot of fancy and expensive equipment in the room and none of the leaders really felt comfortable with the possibility of paying for it if someone accidentally spilled.

Or, worse yet, if something Karla baked touched the machinery. Sparks and melting, people. Sparks and melting.

"Kiss kiss," Karla said, as everyone assembled in the hallway. "Today we're undertaking an exercise that will have all of us working together. If you'll follow us inside?" She opened the doors to the Danger Shop and everyone stepped into...

...yet another hallway. This one should be familiar to most of the students; it was the hallway that led to the library; the library doors stood open and welcoming--though it was possible for the sharp-eyed to notice they looked...flimsier...than usual.

"Sometimes, things can go wrong at this school," Dolf continued. "And it isn't so quickly solved with just one way of looking at things. Some things you have to beat up, some things you have to outsmart. Most of us know what we are good at by now, don't we?"

He smiled encouragingly at those gathered. Well. Sort of encouragingly. He was a little nervous, if you knew where to look.

"Not to say that it's necessarily exclusive by person," Wesley added, as a member of the camp that did both. (Though his credibility was hurt somewhat by how beat-up he looked. Oops.) "You're welcome to try any number of strategies."

"The important thing to keep in mind is teamwork," Karla said. "Working together and making sure--"

Whatever else Karla was going to say was rudely interrupted by three of the doors at the far end of the hallway slamming open--hard enough to embed their knobs into the walls. Out of each door walked a giant, man-shaped creature made of what looked like hardened clay. Seeing the clustered students, the creatures turned towards them and slowly ambled forwards, each footstep ending in hairline cracks in the floor.

Good luck, guys.

[OCD up, please read Important notes! Of course, everything there is OOC knowledge that needs to be figured out ICly. So feel free to whale on these guys for awhile, okay?]

Sensitivity Training, Thursday, October 20th

[onepunchguy.livejournal.com]

There were six questions on the board when class arrived today. If anyone read them, they'd have a pretty good idea what was going to be the subject this week.

And that they were blatantly copied from a book. Because they were way too PC for Guy to have come up with them.

"I hope you all enjoyed your vacations," he said, taking a seat on his desk. He was missing half any eyebrow and had was appeared to be a slight sunburn, so it was obvious that his vacation time was fraught with peril. Meaning it was an awesome week un space for him. "We're gonna keep talking about gender cr--stuff today. I want you all to write out your answers to each of these questions, but you don't hafta put your names on them if you're not comfortable with it."

Wiiiimps.

"Get to it."