"I am the one whose life depends on learning French this weekend but we might want to strategize before enclaver dinner about how adding people to the Group works."

" - oh, right. Um, I think that being an enclaver is a bonus but we really don't want anyone who's going to slow us down when studying or make the rest of us really uncomfortable, because it seems really valuable, actually, having a place where we don't have to think about all of the complicated enclaver rules as much? And it seems hard to un-add someone to the Group, you know, once you've added them? Maybe we could... invite her to some things and not other things, if we like her, and see if we want to end up inviting her to everything the Group does later? - like, we could invite her to the gym thing. Maybe."

"Yep, that sounds good to me. The thing I said to her at first, about how she could find another carrell - I was thinking that a thing we can do, that's less likely to anger enclavers or offend anyone than just directly turning them down, is give them - tasks that if they succeed at the tasks, would suggest they're in fact quite valuable as allies, and then we sort of have an initiation procedure, and it makes groups more real, if they have an initiation procedure. But we probably don't want to only add people who have carrell-coaxing spells and are willing to spend them on studying with us, that might be too high a bar before we've even had the chance to develop a reputation as impressive."

"I think Bella only wanted to study for history of artificing together. Which is less of a big deal than joining the Group, obviously. We should have Standards and not just let any enclaver who asks join, because - if we do just let in every enclaver then that gives us a reputation as suck-ups and not as impressive cool people who can handle themselves."

"That makes sense. We could have, uh, a specific after-dinner time a couple times a week where we specifically do history of artificing homework, maybe in the carrel or maybe somewhere else, and we can invite Bella and other history of artificing people to the specific-class study time? If it turns out that Bella wants to make studying a regular thing at all, she could also end up not liking us. - probably it shouldn't be in the carrel because the carrel would get cramped with very many more people."

"New Orleans might have reading room space. I'm not expecting 'lots of enclavers want to join our study group' to be a problem we have but if it is I think - Boston's probably just in if they want to be, other US enclaves that aren't insane like Toronto and Sacramento we probably want to hang out with at least sometimes to see if we get along with them...I'm fine with snubbing enclaves elsewhere to establish we're not suck-ups, but it seems like the rest of you might be less set on America than I am?"

"I think I'm more concerned with whether the individual people are good for studying with than about where they're from, if we're talking about people we want to invite every time the Group gathers to do anything. For individual class study sessions - I think I'm fine at least trying sessions with most enclavers as long as we don't know of any specific reason to avoid them? I dunno, we should maybe refine any future plans based on how things go with Bella."

"I don't think we have to go out of our way to snub enclaves to establish our reputation as not suck-ups, just being selective on academic merits and not sucking up should do it. Also, I have already snubbed New York so I think my reputation is established enough."

"You have what now? That - seems bad!"

"I mean, I did not do anything serious enough that they'd want revenge or anything like that, I just sat somewhere else in homeroom and made it clear why. I think it helped us get the invite to breakfast with Boston."

"Huh. Fair enough. ...does anyone know any things about New Orleans?"

"It's in America."

"It's in Louisiana. Towards the southern edge."

Is Louisiana part of America? Probably, America has a lot of weirdly-named states and it doesn't sound spanish so it's probably not in south America.

"My German class has one of the Boston enclavers – Marcy, I think? – and I'll be studying with them tomorrow afternoon, actually. Do we have reason to believe that Boston's especially good?"

"Marcy seemed - I was taught to expect that some enclavers are running circles around you at complicated social games, and some enclavers are just very, very competent and noticing whether you are, and apparently there's a third kind of enclaver who is just a blundering mess who shouldn't even be here being carried along by their truly excessive resources, but anyway she's the second kind."

Julian has certainly encountered some blundering messes today but thinks it's more politic to keep that to himself. Unless telling the Group would make it clear that he's not a pathetic suck-up? Except he kind of is a pathetic suck-up, is the problem – unless sucking up pathetically to Shanghai makes him look smart and strategic, because he's in the position to be sucking up to a powerful enclave at all. It's all very confusing and he would really rather just talk about German poetry. 

"I should brush up on my Middle High German, then, so it looks like I know what I'm talking about. At least I'm not going to be the most clueless person in the class, apparently half of them don't even speak modern German." 

"What makes some German High German. Is there High French. Is there Low German."

"Yes Low German, no High French. I think it has to do with where they speak it and literally how high up it is, like if it has mountains or not." 

"Did German dialects just... naturally segregate by elevation?"

"Well, some parts of Germany are very flat and some are very tall and different people lived there? Probably? I'm terrified that all the medieval poets we're going to read are from different places that spoke different Germans and I'm going to have to learn all of them." 

"What you should do is learn the vocabulary for metaphysical speculation in German, Marcy likes metaphysical speculation."

"Oh, that's perfect, Germans love metaphysically speculating, it's just about the first thing you learn." 

Annisa can't tell if he's serious but she laughs; it works either way.