fandomhigh | Fandom High Graduation Ceremony, Class of 2012, Early Saturday Evening (Part 1)

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!event: graduation

Fandom High Graduation Ceremony, Class of 2012, Early Saturday Evening (Part 1)

With things back to normal - or as normal as Fandom ever got - preparations for graduation had gone into full swing. The ceremony was set for right after sunset, to make sure all types of guests could safely attend, and the lawn had been lit up with blue and gold lights, creating safe paths in which to walk to the seating area and giving everything a twinkling, serene appearance.

Of course, the staff knew that graduation was rarely a serene event, and the fact that Ingvar's volcano was being unusually active emphasized the need to prepare the seniors as much as possible. Last year's cache of weapons had been discreetly stashed in a trunk behind the podium...and yes, they'd all been properly cleaned. Who knew what dried Viking blood could do to metal?

Once everything had been arranged, the guests were let in, and all that was left was to pray everything went smoothly.

[OCD is up! Have at it! Welcome | The Processsion | Speeches | Diplomas | OOC]

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The most necessary part of any ceremony, of course.

She's not going to cry this year, for reals.

[Please wait for her to ping in!]

Every year, Zoe tried to write this thing in advance, and every year, she ended up at the podium and just winged it. Hopefully, her pattern of this working well would continue.

"To the Class of 2012, I want to say congratulations for making it this far. Ours is a challenging school, and to have made it this far is a major accomplishment." It was nice when things sounded good to unknowing parents and students alike. "I am always proud to watch you make it to this day, and to know that you're going to go out there and make so many places better. Enjoy the time you have left here, especially if you're sticking around for the summer, and welcome to the next chapter of your lives."

Surely, he will have nothing but nice things to say!

[Please wait for him to ping in!]

"Now, I promised myself that I wouldn't cry or anything," Deadpool started, reading off cue cards. Because that was the way to go. "Not that it was ever gonna happen, because it's just graduation and god knows you'll all wander on back here to teach or just show up and annoy me by making me read about you on radio when I could be spending my time doing nothing at all. My time is valuable, kids. Remember that."

Oh so valuable.

"So, instead of looking to the future where the world ends in December and we're ruled by our mutant overlord, APOCALYPSE, we'll look to the past and when you all were turned into dudes. Or chicks. Occasionally ponies. One memorable time into reality show contestants. Another time super old while I was still awesome looking and young despite all of it." He sniffled. "But no one cares about that. You're all just waiting to get your damn diplomas and take that next step forward to the end of days. And more power to you!"

A beat.

"Wow, that was a downer ending. Who wrote this crap?"

As Scott listened to that, he was trying to figure out if Cable and X-Force had roughed Deadpool up a little too much over the years or not enough.

It was a coin flip, really.

Was that Jonothon, scowling and sinking a little more deeply into his seat at Deadpool's emphatic mention of Apocalypse?

Why yes! Yes it was!

He's not going to cry either. Probably.

[Please wait for him to ping in!]

Anakin swooped up to the podium with the trained steps of a man very used to having all attention focused on him.

"Graduates," he said, nodding at them, "I have taught most of you, fought next to some of you, and watched all of you as you've grown and learned in your time here at this school. Now we set you loose to go back to your own dimensions and hope that what you've discovered about yourself here is enough to help you face the demons--metaphorical and literal--you will find waiting for you there."

He smiled slightly. "You are graduates of Fandom High School, and most of you aren't that annoying. You will do well. Try not to die stupidly."

Please wait for her to ping in!

If Tara had thought a little more about what a valedictorian actually had to do, she probably wouldn't have volunteered, what with the whole public speaking bit. But she sent in her application on a whim, and -- somehow -- she got it, and that meant that after she finished dancing around her dorm room she needed to write a speech. No, she needed to give a speech.

Her knees were shaking as she approached the podium, and the first time she opened her mouth it looked as if she was going to say nothing at all.

She took a deep breath, glanced to her friends in the audience, and managed to start her speech on the second try.

"Hi," she said, still a bit uneasy. "M-my name's Tara. I ... wanted to tell you a story."

Another deep breath, another scan of the audience. "See, once upon a time, there was a girl. And she had -- things inside her she didn't understand, and a family who didn't help much. And she d-didn't really have a lot of friends, because this girl ... she thought she was a freak."

"And then one day, when she was 15, she got sent to summer camp. And she wasn't sure how long she'd be staying, and she was a little scared because, uh, she'd -- never even been on a plane, and she'd be going all the way to the other side of the country.

"But she got on the plane anyhow, and when she got here, she found ... things she never could have imagined. Some of them were horrible. But a lot of them were more wonderful than anything she could have imagined back in that safe little town where, um, nobody really understood her."

"She found friends. She found love. And she found there was so much more to her than she'd ever realized, and that all she needed was the right circumstances to bring it out."

"That girl was me," Tara said. "But she was also the other dozen girls in the class. Or maybe she was a boy. And m-maybe he wasn't scared; maybe he was angry. Or maybe she was just hopeful, when she came here. Every single one of us has a story, and I can't pretend to know them all."

"But I do know Fandom. I've been here almost three years. And -- in spite of every single crazy thing that's happened here, every awful thing, I can't think of a school I would rather have graduated from."

"That's it. Thank you." She gathered her notes as if to leave the stage, then realized she had one more thing to say. "Oh, and, uh -- I want to dedicate my speech to the memory of my mother; I w-wish she could have been here."

And then she was really done, which was a good thing because her eyes were getting all moist.

Bruce actually found something to relate to in that. True, he wasn't a scared girl or a particularly angry boy, but he came to Fandom looking to help with his mission for justice. And now he was leaving, having actually made friends that he wasn't just exploiting in the name of his mission.

It was weird. But Fandom certainly had a habit of shattering expectations in a good way.

So with that, and especially with Tara's closing, Bruce applauded.

Rinoa was so, so proud of Tara. And there were a lot of things she wanted to run and babble to Tara about, about how she got it, and the school had been like that for her, too, and a lot of people, and that was kind of the point of the whole speech, Rinoa, but it still got to her, anyway. But all she was going to do right now was jump up and applaud like crazy.

Dammit. This was really threatening George's "no crying" rule, today. But she just happened to get allergies while thinking about how Fandom had given her some second chances, and that had nothing to do with her allergies.

Edited 2012-04-28 19:15 (UTC)

Dammit, Tara! Because now Karla was sitting in the audience, tears streaming down her face. She'd been a scared girl, too, three years ago. And she'd also found friends, and love, and was glad beyond measure that she could count Tara as one of them.

Oh, Kennedy totally teared up, and she'd admit it.

...which was why all she did was whistle really loudly. Hard to yell through a tight throat.

Donny sniggered when Tara got onstage, not really expecting much. His little sister wasn't exactly the public speaking type.

But when she was done ... well, even he had to admit she hadn't totally embarrassed herself. And she'd remembered to mention their mom. He clapped a few times, if a bit grudgingly.

Please wait for them to ping in!

Unlike the last student to speak, Quinn appeared totally, coolly unruffled as she took the stage. If her voice was even huskier than normal, it was no doubt a trick of the acoustics .

"It is my honor to speak to you, graduates, faculty and guests, as co-president of the Fandom High student body," Quinn began.

"I want to take a second to thank my fellow Madame President, Annie Edison. I'd also like to thank representative Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Andrew Wiggin -- who was a representative our freshman and sophomore years -- and two former students who represented our class in past years, Elle Woods and Prince Alexander of Daventry. Our advisors, Dean Stinson and Principal Winchester, were also totally amazing. The joke is always that student council just plans dances. I hope the class of 2012 helped to show we could do a lot more than that."

She cleared her throat, glanced down at her notecards. "So when I was writing this speech, I went online and looked for song lyrics as inspiration. I found this song by Carrie Underwood called 'Whenever You Remember.' The part in it that I like goes, When you think back on all we've done, I hope you're proud. When you look back and see how far we've come, it was our time to shine, and nobody could hold us down. They thought they'd see us fall. But we, we stood so tall. And no we won't forget."

"Fandom was our time to shine. We went through so much as a class, so many things that a lot of us would have said didn't even exist. But we did it. We touched the sky, because we had each other. Because we helped each other. "

"Graduation is a beginning to a lot of things. Many of us will go on to colleges, careers, families we've planned. But it's also an end to our time to touch the sky together, and I can't help but be a little sad about that. Still, I know Fandom, and I know most of you. And I know that if there was ever a group of people that could keep shining on like the proverbial crazy diamonds, it's us."

"Thank you."

Rilla applauded loudly at the end of Quinn's speech.

"You tell 'em, Quinn!" Claudia shouted, then shrank down in her chair. "Oh, that was out loud, wasn't it."

Annie was completely confident and still smiling a little as she took the podium for her speech. Her speech which had mostly been written for about a month now, let's face it. She was a champ at public speaking here. And since Quinn had done the thank yous better than she could have...

"Thank you, Principal Winchester and the administration, my fellow classmates, members of Student Council, and guests.

"We're all here for different reasons. Maybe we were looking for a better experience. Maybe things weren't great at home. Maybe we were running from something, or toward something, or just wanted or needed a change. Maybe this place wasn't what we thought it was going to be before we arrived. I know it definitely wasn't for me," she said with a wry little smile. "I came here thinking I was going to an ordinary school and get a fresh start in life, that my senior year would be something I'd have to muddle through just to get a diploma. I thought I would work hard, get good grades and graduate, go on to an Ivy league school and in twenty years I wouldn't think much about where I spent my last year of high school, because it wouldn't matter that much.

"And a year later, seeing all that I have of what Fandom and the people who live here have to offer, I'm glad it's not what I expected. In the last twelve months I've met people from all walks of life, some that I've fought with, some that became my friends. Some that I fought with who then became my friends." Hi, Quinn! "I might not have taken all the usual classes I thought I would, but I learned from the ones I took nonetheless. I didn't spend every free minute in my room studying, but I learned valuable life lessons, like how to appreciate people's differences, how normalcy might just equal boring, and that imitation is not always the most sincere form of flattery even if a teacher has you do it for a grade.

"My life's not going to turn out exactly the way I thought it would a year ago... and that's okay. I know now that just because something isn't exactly what I expect, that doesn't make it wrong, and it doesn't make it not worth enjoying, or learning from. And I have you, the teachers and administration who lead us, the students who go here, those I was proud to serve on Student Council with and especially the graduating class of 2012 to thank for that.

"Future graduates, and even just people listening in the audience, I encourage you to learn this if you haven't already, to accept the curveballs life throws at you, and to remember that this is a good place to get used to curveballs... because seriously. If you can do that, then you'll be ready for whatever future circumstances put in front of you, and I hope by the end of your experience here, you'll be as proud to be a part of Fandom as I am right now. Thank you."

Told you, a champ at public speaking.

Edited 2012-04-28 14:16 (UTC)

Rilla was totally not crying okay.

She had allergies.

Well, damn. Quinn was impressed enough to cock one eyebrow at Annie as she applauded. That had been an incredible speech -- and Quinn has to dab at her eyes with one knuckle and remind herself very hard that she was not going to be a graduate with runny eyeliner.

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Fandom High Graduation Ceremony, Class of 2012, Early Saturday Evening (Part 1)

Speeches!

Principal Winchester's Speech

Re: Principal Winchester's Speech

Vice President Deadpool's Speech

Re: Vice President Deadpool's Speech

Re: Vice President Deadpool's Speech

Re: Vice President Deadpool's Speech

Dean Skywalker's Speech

Re: Dean Skywalker's Speech

Valedictorian's Speech - Tara Maclay

Re: Valedictorian's Speech - Tara Maclay

Re: Valedictorian's Speech - Tara Maclay

Re: Valedictorian's Speech - Tara Maclay

Re: Valedictorian's Speech - Tara Maclay

Re: Valedictorian's Speech - Tara Maclay

Re: Valedictorian's Speech - Tara Maclay

Re: Valedictorian's Speech - Tara Maclay

Student Council President's Speech - Annie Edison and Quinn Fabray

Re: Student Council President's Speech - Annie Edison and Quinn Fabray

Re: Student Council President's Speech - Annie Edison and Quinn Fabray

Re: Student Council President's Speech - Annie Edison and Quinn Fabray

Re: Student Council President's Speech - Annie Edison and Quinn Fabray

Re: Student Council President's Speech - Annie Edison and Quinn Fabray

Re: Student Council President's Speech - Annie Edison and Quinn Fabray