I like Dungeons and Dragons. My family (tries to) play every weekend. However, Dungeons and Dragons is not the only Tabletop RPG out there, and it also isn’t the easiest one to learn. It also only really works for classic high fantasy settings, so any game set in the modern day is extremely difficult to create within that system.

For all of these reasons, I decided to make a Call of Cthulhu adventure. Based on the works of HP Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu is about characters within a world much like our own, with the magical elements being on the fringes of the game, far above the characters. It is also very rules- light, so it is easy to explain to a new player.

I lived in Egypt for almost four years, and in that time I went all over Cairo and other countries around the Mediterranean with my family. In those places, I saw Middle Eastern old cities. As an American, none of our cities have a walled section from the middle ages, so these areas seemed special and different to me.

I decided to make an adventure module set in one of these Old cities, using Call of Cthulhu to create pre-generated characters.

• Alex Old City Sheet
• Zayna Old City Sheet
• Adrian Old City Sheet
• Shamoun Old City Sheet
• Hamish Old City Sheet
• Abdel Old City Sheet

For a while I just had this Call of Cthulhu adventure in a folder with other vaguely fantastical story ideas, but when it came time to pick a CAS project, I saw my opportunity to play it.

So I did. I got a number of my friends (plus Mr. Echols) together and we managed to play through two sessions of the Old City using Call of Cthulhu.

I’d say it went pretty well. While we didn’t get through the entire adventure, I had to think through details of the world that I hadn’t thought of initially, and I had to adapt my abstract ideas about the politics and dynamics of this city into motivations for individual characters that the players would meet.

From the beginning one of the ideas in the Debate club was that we would debate on contemporary issues. However, this got lost in a push to get good topics that had lots of stuff to engage with and not be too one-sided. The issue we kept running into is that when you really get down to it, most controversial issues are actually fairly one-sided when it comes to actual facts.

Two sessions ago, I let the -now much larger- class of participants in the ASA come up with a Motion. Much to my surprise, they went straight for a contemporary issue. By near unanimous agreement, they thought that the best motion would be Everyone has the Right to an Abortion. I was somewhat surprised, and I actually asked them if they would be comfortable arguing against that motion. They said yes, so the plan was laid out.

As I mentioned briefly, the Debate ASA got much larger for the new ASA block. This gave us an interesting opportunity- what if we did two debates at the same time? As it turned out enough people didn’t come to each session that we ended up going with a simply four vs. four debate structure. However, we did have a slightly different team structure while researching as a result.

We had one full session of research, but most people couldn’t make it because of classwork reasons. That meant that when it came to debating today, a lot of people were surprised and were disorganized as a result. They made it, though. They organized arguments and got into debating position. I didn’t end up debating with them, though. Aura couldn’t make it today so I had to adjudicate, and I tried to help both teams equally in research- although ultimately I think both teams needed more support than I could give.

The Debate itself (Pictured above) was incredibly short because people didn’t have enough prepared. It was over in fifteen minutes, which was somewhat disappointing, but I’m more happy that it worked at all. At the end I gave some (a lot) of constructive criticism, and Mr. Antoney added more suggestions, most notably that we spend next session researching persuasion and workshopping how you try to convince someone of something.

This didn’t end up being that big a thing, but still I’m glad it happened. I have been wanting to move towards a shorter researching portion for each debate, so basically we achieved my goal by accident. I think that if this was our baseline we can start getting somewhere.

Rehearsal for Little Shop of Horrors has continued, and I have been there (almost) every time.

I was sick on Wednesday, so I didn’t go in. Fortunately Pep did all of the stuff because she’s the one actually in charge.

I did go in on Monday, but that was a confused and dejected rehearsal, and sadly not much was achieved. But hey it got done in the end.

The real, important rehearsal this week was All-Day saturday. It was a mixed bag overall, but for the backstage crew it went amazingly. We got all of the props we had in place and locked down in terms of where they needed to go, and we know what props we still need. (There aren’t that many- just a picture for Mushnik to hold up in one scene plus a couple minor ones.)

Ms Jackson got very upset at the performers, but it seems like that happens on all productions. The stress starts getting to people a week out and things start breaking down. From my perspective backstage the songs sound pretty good, but who am I to judge- I do not understand music.

Back to props. There are four props tables throughout the auditorium. Each person on the backstage crew is in charge of one of them. I am in charge of the table behind the stage itself on stage left. There aren’t that many props over here, but there are a few important ones. Obviously there’s The Plant, but also there is the masak Orin puts on that kills him, and there’s a few other props for Orin’s death scene. There’s also a handful of things that the ensemble walk in carrying at one point or another.

In terms of actual things I, personally need to do there aren’t that many. I basically need to make sure the performers carry on props when they need them and make sure that they are in the right corner at the beginning of every run-through. That is an achievable goal, although sometimes it gets hard because I spend an hour doing nothing before I have one hyper important cue to make. That is not an easy set of incentives to balance, and I need to stop myself from zoning out pretty often.

I actually get a pretty nice view of the stage from my position manning a table just to its left. I get to look up at characters on the bridge when they go there, and while there isn’t always something there, it can create awesome images occasionally.

My fears of the potential for going wrong in regards to social consciousness have materialized, but nowhere near as badly as they could have. Some of the dialogue just doesn’t work quite right because the people speaking it don’t have the accent it was written for, but it isn’t that bad. People will just find that kind of unnatural. So I think this production will go pretty well.

The Backstage crew has begun attending rehearsals for the Secondary production: Little Shop of Horrors. Thus far we have gone to three rehearsals- one on Monday, one on Wednesday and one on Saturday.

The first rehearsal was boring- basically we just talked to the performers about what the musical is about and blocked it out. Nothing much happened.

On the second rehearsal, the backstage crew just watched the performers block out the ending of the play, and served as the audience so they could figure out their sitelines. It was very useful for us because the staging of LSoH is incredibly unintuitive. It is what is called “thrust staging” because the stage itself is essentially a backdrop. The actual play happens in the center of the auditorium, which as a result has relatively few seats. It also means that “backstage” is a collection of tables that serve as depots scattered throughout the room. So it was good for learning.

The third rehearsal, on saturday was the big important one. It was the first rehearsal where the performers were singing with microphones attached and the band present. Notably, the band is a group of Processional Sri Lankan session musicians who have been brought in to thelp with the production, not a student band as I had expected. Because of these firsts, it was very important. The performers were nervous, and it was the first big event where all of the elements were combined.

Personally, I think that doing LSoH for a high school musical was a mistake. Firstly, many of the character speak in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). That isn’t necessarily a problem, but when the performers are not themselves African Americans, it is very easy for their performance to resemble old minstrel shows- there is a long history of racism when imitating the way black people speak. Additionally, Mushnik has a New York accent and speaks with Yiddish phrases mixed into his words, including ones that are now in the conventional vernacular, making them less obvious. (Kaput!)

I am not saying that the performers are being racist, but I am saying that they are on thin ice and no one seems to know they are even skating.

Beyond that, I actually feel that the performers are doing very well. I’m not a musician, but they sounded good singing and everyone is obviously very excited and passionate about the production. LSOH isn’t my favorite musical, but I respect that they are doing well at it.

The backstage element was very boring. We figured out that we had five people, four of whom were present and four corners each with a prop depot, so each person got one area. I got assigned behind stage left, which mostly had props for the song “Dentist.” This meant that my job was fairly boring, and I ended up sitting there and reading one of the ensemble’s scripts for most of the performance. Organizationally it went pretty well as Pep is good at managing these things, and I think we have a good plan. I will need to be quicker on my queues, but that is something that comes with practice.

Despite my reservations, I think that our high school production of LSoH is going to be the best version of itself it can be.

OSC is part of the South Asian International Schools Association (SAISA.) It’s a group of international schools that are all roughly the same size (very small.) They hold tournaments for each of their school’s sports teams every year, and SAISA sports a events are one of the big events the OSC community gets to watch. One recurring bit is that our mascot (the Gecko) is by far and away the cutest and goofiest mascot, which is a fun contrast.

At Debate club this tuesday, Mr. Antoney made an announcement- he had talked to people at SAISA about forming a new SAISA Debate Event, and he needed us to draft a structure for how the event would work. I was excited about this, although I had the sardonic realization that that would have been a great thing to mention on my College application because they’re all already in.

I drew upon my experience at the World Scholar’s cup for inspiration- the debate portion of that event was my main experience with Debate. The way it works there is that at the beginning of the Debate day, a team is given a tree diagram of rooms to go to and which side of the motion they would be on. I wrote a three day schedule (as was specified by Mr. Antoney- all SAISA events are three days long) where the first two days follow that structure, followed by a third day with a standard single elimination tournament. Under this structure, schools send multiple teams of three to the event.

Model Day Schedules

I am not sure if this will actually happen, but I hope it does. Debate is something I am passionate about, and OSC doesn’t really have any Debate competitions or events right now. I hope this is an experience I can help to bring to other people in lower grades.

From the beginning of the year the Debate Club has been planning to host a Books and Cookies. Books and Cookies’ are presentations held by a member of the OSC community every wednesday at lunch time in the library, focusing on that person’s profession or interest. Mr. Luvinzu, the Debate club’s supervisor, thought that a Books and Cookies would be an excellent platform to show off the progress everyone in the club has made.  My co-leader and I reached out to Ms. Lockwood, the librarian and scheduled a date- Wednesday the 25th of October.

We spent the two sessions of the ASA before the 25th preparing, choosing a motion and dividing into teams. I became of the two team captains, with a randomly selected group of other students including Vansh.

The motion Mr. Luvinzu came up with after discussing with the class was “Masculinity is dying, not evolving.” Initially I thought that seemed too presumptive, but I realized that masculinity is such a broad topic that a narrow motion is kind of needed- and as I discovered later, the motion isn’t that narrow.

Masculinity

At the beginning of the research process my team did not know which side of the motion we would be on. That meant that we formed arguments to both propose and oppose the motion. Initially I thought we would only have three speakers per team, but later we clarified we would have four. This changed how I structured our arguments.

Roughly what happened is that I outlined what each speaker would say, then the other people on my team chose which speaker they wanted to be and then elaborated and found examples to back up each argument. There was some confusion about if they could have their phone when talking, but I clarified the answer which was that they could have their phone while sitting down but not while giving their argument.

After some internal discourse, we chose which team would argue which side at the end of the session before the books and cookies, which because the ASA was on tuesday was the day before. This gave us a full night to plan and emotionally prepare.

The actual debate went really well. Because of poor communication with our peers most of the people who showed up were middle schoolers who were less informed on the topic, but still they were engaged. All of the speakers successfully gave their arguments and filled their time, and the discourse happened. It wasn’t quite as tactical or planned as more experienced debaters would manage, but it went pretty well.

I am happy with how this went. The Debate ASA still has work to do, but this was an excellent step.

The library recorded it, so here is the link.

I did it. I gave a TEDx Talk at TEDxYouth@OSC. I’d even say it went pretty well.

I had to change my talk a lot over time. I knew that I wanted to talk about how all stories are political whether intentionally or not, but initially I was going from the angle that it was still possible to consume media apolitically. Unfortunately, that basically isn’t true so I really had to stretch that section. At that point my parents intervened and basically told me to drop that angle and just explain why all stories are political, which worked much better.

I removed several of the less relevant tangents that I had included only because they interested me, including a joke about the Legend of Drizzt being the male version of Twilight.  I think all of my examples in the final talk were actually relevant and useful.

The night before the talk, my mom had me write out my entire script by hand on a piece of paper. It was painful for my joints and it took over an hour, but I did it and was better for it. I had no issues remembering my script.

I got up on stage, then I gave my talk. I phrased and ordered a couple sentences in it differently, but that wasn’t that big of a deal. I moved on and it was perfectly clear. It went great. I was fairly confident about that part though- I have never had an issue doing public speaking. I don’t get stage fright, and when repeating lines my natural instinct is to stay planted in one place, so public speaking comes fairly naturally to me.

People liked my talk. Afterwards a lot of people told me I had done a good job, and I really appreciate that. I am so glad it went well.

I am very passionate about stories and how they are all political, because when I was writing a novel for my personal project in middle school it accidentally ended up having incredibly obvious political themes. That experience made me realize that there is no such thing as an apolitical story, so this talk was me explaining the actual reasons why with evidence. I want this understanding to be widespread, and a ted talk was the first platform I had to do that. I am so glad I executed this argument well.

Notably, Ted decided to upload my talk, which they only did with about a third of the talks from TedX OSC. This was a successful experience.