open | your baddest behavior

[cozen]

WHO: Alexandrie, Bastien, Byerly, and their captive audience
WHAT: Mandatory etiquette and dance lessons
WHEN: Justinian 15, 9:45
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: See the OOC post and IC announcement for more information! If you didn't sign up, you can still participate in Parts A and D, and just handwave the other two, without needing to sign up or get an assignment. If you want to do B and C, you can find your own dance partner/seating group OOC, or you can sign up now and we'll dole out new assignments if we get enough latecomers to do so. If you signed up and are missing from the lists when you shouldn't be, I'm sorry and please tell me!

disclaimer: event less fancy than pictured

Seating Assignments
— Table One: Gwenaëlle, Iorveth, Matthias, Athessa
— Table Two: Flint, Ilias, Darras, Med Seller, Yngvi
— Table Three: Julius, Thranduil, Anders, Brienne
— Table Four: Benedict, Colin, Valentine, Six, Derrica
— Table Five: Teren, Salvio, Bartimaeus, Osana
— Table Six: Freddie, Petrana, Kain, Merrill, Silver
— Table Seven: Yseult, Cosima, Steve, Inessa
— Table Eight: Sidony, Fifi, Nell, Fingon
— Table Nine: Thor, Nathaniel H., Solas, Skadi

Dance Partners
— Cosima & Nathaniel H.
— Athessa & Anders
— Teren & Flint
— Freddie & Bartimaeus
— Yseult & Darras
— Nell & Julius
— Merrill & Colin
— Skadi & Benedict
— Gwenaëlle & Solas
— Petrana & Salvio
— Osana & the Medicine Seller
— Sidony & Matthias
— Six & Thranduil
— Brienne & Valentine
— Fifi & Steve
— Thor & Fingon
— Ilias & Iorveth

Comments

Julius (OTA)

[overharrowed]

While not bad, per se, Julius is less adept at the dancing than he was at the dinner. You can learn fancy table manners by reading; reading about dancing is, on the whole, less helpful. He's coordinated and graceful enough, but even radiating confidence cannot entirely disguise the fact that he's not practiced at this.

If it puts him in any sort of mood, it doesn't show, however. He's happy enough to dance with anyone who asks. He'll never improve if he refuses to participate, after all. And if it gives him a chance to speak with some people he only knows in passing, or to renew an acquaintance, all the better.

[galvanising]

Good news, because Nell is here to make him look at least a bit more knowledgeable. She can dress the part--in a gown fit for any Hightown ballroom--but, as she's not the least bit shy in admitting as she locates her assigned partner and offers her hands (where do they go for Fancy Dancing anyway?): "I've no notion how to do this. I'll do my best to avoid your toes, but no promises at the start."

[overharrowed]

"Noted. We'll muddle through. At least I'm not limping anymore." Small mercies, though that might have gotten him out of the dancing part of the lesson. From observation, he guides her left hand to his shoulder and then takes her right.

"I should have stuck to research. Now I'm in diplomacy and I may need to actually remember this for later. Though based on a few of the comments, if I'm sent back to Ferelden it's mostly stomping and clapping ones hands and saying look, a dog if one needs an inconvenient noble to look the other way." You're allowed to make fun if you're from there.

[galvanising]

Nell laughs, setting her hands where he points them, because not being from a place is never going to stop her making fun.

"Nowhere near sophisticated enough for Diplomacy," she says, drawling the word out before flashing him a crooked smile. "You should consider Forces. A very different kind of dancing. We'll see if it translates."

It might at least at the start--without music or real steps just yet beyond making squares to a beat, she picks it up easily enough, watching those around them who look confident or following Julius's lead if he's inclined to take it. "So is that what you're doing for Diplomacy?" she asks, "Making nice with Ferelden?"

[overharrowed]

Counting to four, at least, is something that doesn't seem to take so much concentration from either of them that it affects the conversation. He leads, but it's hardly an overbearing one as he tries to pick up the steps beyond simply moving forward and back.

"Still early days. I suspect that after the phylactery negotiations and calming some annoyed nobles who were worried about mage inheritance in the aftermath, someone thought my talents could be put to better use." He smiles, wry but warm. "I suppose I should be grateful I didn't acquit myself better at Ghislain; Forces might have been more eager to poach me."

(He'd done fine at Ghislain. Better than some, and survived to know it. Still, every time he's in a major battle, he remembers he'd pledged to avoid those the last time.)

"Short-handed as we are these days, I suppose that's always a standing risk, though."

[galvanising]

"And getting shorter by the day," Nell agrees. "I don't know if Research or Diplomacy will save you if we run into another Ghislain."

A happy thought! to go with their dancing. She follows easily enough, falling into the simple rhythm of it.

"There's no way they're going to let us off this easy," she says, eyes narrowing at the leaders of this event, observing from the edges, and the drummer setting the beat, "What do you wager it turns into one of those complicated ones with all sorts of claps and hops any second now?"

[overharrowed]

"60-40 in favor," quick enough he'd probably thought of the odds before now. "It'd be higher, but I suspect they may winnow out the hopeless ones here and make the people who are good at it do a special advanced lesson where no one is likely to run into them."

He'd glanced over at Petrana and her partner; he suspected heroic efforts on her part not to betray just how elementary she found this bit.

"What are Forces up to these days, between masasive, all-hands-on-deck battle situations?"

[galvanising]

"So I should be treading on your toes after all, is what you're saying?"

Nell follows his gaze with a flick of her own, but doesn't comment immediately. Instead she gives an exaggerated sigh. "Oh, you know. Languishing in boredom, polishing swords into needles." She shrugs. "A bit of this and that. Watch duty, escorting supply shipments, nabbing the occasional suspect, getting loaned out as guards to folks we're trying to impress. Last week I helped the City Guard break up a fight, that was a strange new experience."

[overharrowed]

"I can imagine." A brief pause, then: "I met the new Captain of the Watch. He gave the impression that he'll have them saving kittens from trees and doing outreach to the local youth in short order. Not that I disapprove, we can use all the goodwill we can get. But he seems very earnest."

Julius is not entirely sure whether or not Steve Rogers is having them all on. More observation needed.

[galvanising]

"He does, doesn't he? I got the same impression." A shameful waste of a figure, in her opinion, but that's hardly polite ballroom conversation, even she knows that.

"You never know what you're going to get with rifters, do you?" They've certainly run the gamut. "But he seems eager and there's an air of competence, so we figured it was worth a try. If nothing else he was smart enough not to come through and start shouting, so that's something. It puts him in fairly select company." She doesn't feel the need to tack on an actual pointed look toward Petrana.

[overharrowed]

"Given the diversity of life experiences, a diversity of reactions are only to be expected, I should think," he says, mildly. "Some of them seem better primed to adapt than others."

And then there's the sneaking suspicion that all of them are, somehow, echos from the Fade that could vanish when Corypheus is dealt with, or literally any time before then. It's a worry he's doing his best to ignore for the time being.

"Of the rifters I might be inclined to worry about, from a diplomacy perspective, he is not near the top of the list." Implying that Julius has a list. He probably does.

[ipseite]

Petrana doesn't ask him to dance so much as assume that he's going to dance with her, slipping her hands into his and drawing him out with her— “You look most striking this evening,” she says, as if she hadn't laid out everything he's wearing and judiciously fussed with the fastenings for ten minutes before releasing him into the wild.

[overharrowed]

"I had excellent advice," he says, arch but warm. "How was dinner? Between the food and the conversation, most of my attention was on my own table, so I wasn't able to gauge much from a distance."

He doesn't resist her drawing him into the dance, assuming this was always inevitable. He's a reasonably graceful man, but he's still guarded. Among Julius' qualities (faults, depending on who one asked) is a reluctance to be seen as unskilled at anything. He is intellectually aware that one needs to practice in order to master something; he would just prefer to do it privately, where no one can see him fail.

[ipseite]

Perhaps a relief, then, that she doesn't attempt anything so ambitious as Salvio's turn about the floor; they find the rhythm and settle into it, and Petrana has some experience with very subtly leading backwards, where necessary.

“I've attended far worse dinners in my life,” she says, rueful. “This one has been illuminating. You were sitting with Anders and the Provost—I think I did not recognise your fourth?” A prompt.

[overharrowed]

He's not too proud to follow her subtle lead, which suggests they may not do too badly.

"Brienne of Tarth," he supplies, easily enough. "A very new arrival, I gather. A rifter, and catching up quickly but with a lot to fill in. Forces, unless I very much miss my guess, though she didn't say explicitly." He'd liked her well enough; he's not sure to what degree their paths will cross in the future, but it will be no hardship to be genuinely friendly to her if they do.

[ipseite]

“A promising review.” Catching up quickly, and not announcing herself in great detail upon a first dinner encounter; Petrana's frustration with rifters is nothing new, but her relief when they do well is sincere enough. It serves all Riftwatch the better, which cannot be ignored.

(The slight shifts in pressure to direct him become less and less, as they find their footing.)

“How have you found the evening?”

[overharrowed]

"Illuminating, though I wish I had the ability to observe more. Though, as the provost's wife observed, I was at a bit of a disadvantage where childhood lessons were concerned." He hadn't minded the observation, precisely, but it was a reminder of the major holes he would need to fill if he were truly going to carve out a place for himself after Corypheus is dealt with.

Rather than let his thoughts weigh him down, though, he adds, "I trust you've had plenty of opportunities to observe, at least. Hopefully you've found it sufficient compensation for the elementary lessons on offer."

[ipseite]

“Is that what she observed to you,” terribly mild. Petrana's long-standing dislike of the Provost is what it is; she doesn't pay especial mind to him or to his wife, but the latter was rather difficult to miss this evening. (Julius, she thinks, would never so embarrass her.)

But the added question prompts a warmer, more thoughtful look.

“Well, I could not begrudge the necessity nor their approach to it. It's been very interesting to observe, and I daresay I'm not the only one to think so. I must speak with the Duke de Coucy again, I think.”

[overharrowed]

"I did notice he managed to work his way out of 'mandatory for everyone,' though I suppose it's not as if anyone could argue that he needs the review." And the duke had shown up, at least, obviously wishing to make use of the same opportunity to observe. "It's a lot of information available at a stroke, to those in a position to make use of it. Even with my split attention, it's worth knowing a bit more about a few people's relative approaches."

Always the diplomat; it's a wonder he was ever in another division.

"And the food was quite good, so hopefully everyone is slightly less inclined to grouse."

[ipseite]

“I was rather impressed with their selections.” Both for the quality of the food and its obvious purpose as a lesson. “I don't know that it will put paid to the grousing, granted, but I was pleasantly surprised by the number of those who made earnest effort.”

[overharrowed]

"I think most people want this to work, on a grander scale. And it's worth knowing those who can and can't put their own discontent on a given task aside." He pauses, a moment, as it becomes clear they need to turn a certain way; he'd rather let the conversation momentarily lapse than step on her foot.

After a moment: "This looks very simple when you watch it." Not a complaint, exactly, but rueful all the same.

[ipseite]

“You're doing very well,” she says, encouraging, and she doesn't only mean the dancing.

[overharrowed]

"You're humoring me," he says, quieter but warm. "But I'll take the praise all the same."

[ipseite]

“But not insincerely,” she protests, at once, laughing.

[overharrowed]

She's rewarded with a quiet chuckle. "Well, I'll take it. The overall goal is certainly worthwhile, and it's not as if the principles are unfamiliar." Whether he means charming people or footwork isn't necessarily clear. Possibly both.

"Do you remember, when you were new at this sort of thing?"