The JOI-designed locker-room mirror: practicing "natural and uncomposed" expressions

timeline_event

texture · 17 Nov YDAU (dateline); standing

When: 17 Nov YDAU (the empty-locker-room note) / ~general
What: [Ambient/setting beat, carried for its Hal-motif value.] The E.T.A. males' locker room holds "the best mirror in the Academy, intricately lit from all perspectives," at which a player can "practice expressions, try to look all natural and uncomposed so you can try to see what you really might normally look like to other people" — "Dr. J. O. Incandenza knew his adolescents" (JOI designed it). Directly keys the novel's face/affect-dissociation motif that centers on Hal (cf. his own mirror-checking "for unintentional hilarity," scenes 132/170, and Kenkle's "mirth" reading, 167). The scene's foreground (Pemulis/Possalthwaite/Freer, the start of Wayne's meltdown) is non-Hal and left aside.