Susan Sto Helit (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
inthebones) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
mayfield_rpg2012-05-03 01:52 pm
inthebones) wrote in mayfield_rpg2012-05-03 01:52 pm
Entry tags:
May I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? Sweaty, Stinky, and Buzzing with Flies
[action, school]
[As the students file into the classroom and to their desks, they may note that their beloved instructor has a more dour expression on her face than is normal. ...Actually, it was a little hard to tell given her default expression 90% of the time, but surely that twitching vein is more noticeable than it usually is.
Susan is quiet as the class settles down. ...After a few moments of silence, she walks to the door and shuts it firmly. Slightly ominously. Susan Sto Helit clears her throat.]
Now, then. It's my pleasure to announce that today marks the beginning of the apparently annual poetry unit also apparently required in this class.
[This is spoken in the same tone as one would announce an untimely death or perhaps that the grocery store was entirely out of gourmet chocolates.]
3:30 this afternoon will mark the end. Until then, let's all work together to make this as painless as possible. As the good majority of you likely know, the 'art' of poetry seems to involve deluging your work with as many metaphors, similes, and vague symbolic phrases as possible until it's impossible to tell what you mean apart from that you're fond of roses. Just work at it until it all wraps around from agonizingly incomprehensible into what can pass for sheer genius if you squint and read from about five kilometers away.
It's a bit like magic if magic involved a fervent desire to set things on fire with your brain. ...Or, I suppose, exactly like magic.
Right. Ground rules.
[Susan snaps her fingers and the blackboard flips open to reveal.]
YOUR FAVORITE LETTER
IF YOU CHOOSE TO WRITE HAIKU
WILL SOON BE THE SIXTH
...Actually, that's the only rule.
Alright, get to work. First five students to write something that doesn't make their classmates feel the urge to give up on English literature forever will receive full marks. ...Yes, that means you're reciting your work to the class.
[action, grocery store, late afternoon]
[Mother's Day was next week. ...That meant chocolate displays.
...
...
...
There was nothing wrong with stocking up on chocolates for the rest of the year when they were in greater stock than usual. A grocery basket half filled with them is certainly nothing unusual. Even if she is eating one out of the box before she purchased it. It's been a long day. ...What do you mean, a personal rule of one a day, how do you even know about that? Shut up. Go away. Mind your own business. Do I judge you when I come across four bottles of wine in your basket?
This is not a conversation Susan is having with anyone in particular, but it soon will be if the expression she wears on her face as she chews on a chocolate (nougat, ugh) is at all prophetic. It's been a very long day.]
[As the students file into the classroom and to their desks, they may note that their beloved instructor has a more dour expression on her face than is normal. ...Actually, it was a little hard to tell given her default expression 90% of the time, but surely that twitching vein is more noticeable than it usually is.
Susan is quiet as the class settles down. ...After a few moments of silence, she walks to the door and shuts it firmly. Slightly ominously. Susan Sto Helit clears her throat.]
Now, then. It's my pleasure to announce that today marks the beginning of the apparently annual poetry unit also apparently required in this class.
[This is spoken in the same tone as one would announce an untimely death or perhaps that the grocery store was entirely out of gourmet chocolates.]
3:30 this afternoon will mark the end. Until then, let's all work together to make this as painless as possible. As the good majority of you likely know, the 'art' of poetry seems to involve deluging your work with as many metaphors, similes, and vague symbolic phrases as possible until it's impossible to tell what you mean apart from that you're fond of roses. Just work at it until it all wraps around from agonizingly incomprehensible into what can pass for sheer genius if you squint and read from about five kilometers away.
It's a bit like magic if magic involved a fervent desire to set things on fire with your brain. ...Or, I suppose, exactly like magic.
Right. Ground rules.
[Susan snaps her fingers and the blackboard flips open to reveal.]
YOUR FAVORITE LETTER
IF YOU CHOOSE TO WRITE HAIKU
WILL SOON BE THE SIXTH
...Actually, that's the only rule.
Alright, get to work. First five students to write something that doesn't make their classmates feel the urge to give up on English literature forever will receive full marks. ...Yes, that means you're reciting your work to the class.
[action, grocery store, late afternoon]
[Mother's Day was next week. ...That meant chocolate displays.
...
...
...
There was nothing wrong with stocking up on chocolates for the rest of the year when they were in greater stock than usual. A grocery basket half filled with them is certainly nothing unusual. Even if she is eating one out of the box before she purchased it. It's been a long day. ...What do you mean, a personal rule of one a day, how do you even know about that? Shut up. Go away. Mind your own business. Do I judge you when I come across four bottles of wine in your basket?
This is not a conversation Susan is having with anyone in particular, but it soon will be if the expression she wears on her face as she chews on a chocolate (nougat, ugh) is at all prophetic. It's been a very long day.]
School
He's not munching on students, nor making a mess of things, he's...actually paying attention?
He's completely lost on the whole poem thing though.]
no subject
Did you want a desk, or are you satisfied with the floor?
no subject
It didn't look like she was getting ready to throw him out, nor were any of the students fleeing in panic.]
Uh...
I'm good right here, I guess.
no subject
Then sit quietly and try not to disrupt the rest of the class. If you'd like to write a poem, talk to me after class.
[Simba may notice, if he were observant, that the students were all sitting very, very still. Perfectly still, in fact. The clock on the wall wasn't moving, either.]
no subject
...before losing interest five minutes later and trying to find other ways to distract himself.]
no subject
no subject
So within about fifteen minutes, Simba doses off while everyone else continues working on their poems.]
no subject
no subject
[He lifts his head immediately after being woken up, before rising to his feet. Oh cool, all the other students were gone now.]
no subject
...Just to be sure, you are a talking lion, is that right?
no subject
no subject
Do you actually want to be in school? I don't think you're on the roster.
no subject
[He sounds pretty please about this fact too.]
no subject