Punching People for Fun and Profit, Period 1 [Class Four | 9/23/2009]

[nofatjokes.livejournal.com]

Fred moved the class to the Danger Shop today, as they'd be doing some more dangerous stuff this week.

"Sometimes, it ain't good enough to just use your own body," Fred said. "Sometimes, you gotta use what's around you to take out someone."

He pointed to a table with various household objects. "All of these can be great in a fight. Anything heavy, you can hit someone with it. Anything powdery, you can throw it in their eyes. And never underestimate the power of a baseball bat."

Fred then pointed at another table. "Now, if you're in a bar, most likely the best thing you're gonna have acces to is a bottle. Now, you can really screw up your hand breakin' one of these, if you aren't me. There's a right way to do this."

He grabbed a bottle and demonstrated one technique.

"Course, that's really just a party trick. Remember, if you're gonna hit someone with a bottle, be ready that you might cut yourself it you squeeze too tight."

"Now I just want you all to get a feel for this stuff. So, go grab a couple totally modable every day items, and beat up on the human-shaped practice dummies." He pointed over at them.

"Anyone hurts themself, its your own damn fault. Don't be stupid. And nobody use any power tools, okay?"

He didn't anyone attacking something with a chainsaw.

[ooc: OCD first, por favor Open like an open thing that is open.]

Classical Genre [Tuesday, 1st Period]

[cuff-me-once.livejournal.com]

As the class entered the classroom, Rick gestured in the direction of the customary coffee and pastries, waiting for them to collect their caffeine and sugar before starting to talk.

"Morning kids," he said cheerfully, sipping from his own much. "Since we're looking at fantasy literature next week, I'll save most of my talking for then and keep things simple this week."

"Now, like sci-fi, you can have the same problems with defining what actually constitutes a fantasy work because it simply encompasses so much. Even before we get to the doorstopper novels that most people think of when you say the word, we're talking myth, legend, folklore, fairy tales, thousands of years of human creative endeavour. However, general rule of thumb goes that the story contains fantastic elements in an internally consistent and coherent framework, along with themes of inspiration from mythology and folklore. If you've got that, you can pretty much go wild."

"What this means today is that in addition to the usual talking about what you watched, I also want you guys to talk about what you think of when you hear the word fantasy in relation to a story. Tropes, elements, character types, the whole shebang."

"Now, onto the films. A lot of western fantasy films tend to fall into either the high fantasy or sword and sorcery subgenres. So you've got a lot of epic battles between good and evil, or swashbuckling heroics in search of treasure and glory. All taking place in distant, far-off lands, after all, there's a reason that half of your lists were shot in New Zealand, though Australia is now getting a look in with Passage of the Dusk Strider." Rick continued on in this vein for a while.

Finally, he pointed at a random student. "Enough from me, your turn."

[OOC: OCD up.]

[Class Roster|Syllabus|Class Rules|Previous Classes]

Library, Wednesday [9/23]

[ancientbschamp.livejournal.com]

This had not been the way Gabrielle had planned on waking up this morning, of course, but she was taking it fairly well in stride, and was more worried about Karla, really.

No, really, this was not completely strange to her; the girl was from the Very Special ancient Greece, after all. Crazy things happened there all the time. Once you'd learned to stop asking 'but HOW DOES THAT WORK?!?' about one of Zeus's metamorphosizing conquests (or centaur babies, ow ow ow), swapping genders was really, really basic stuff.

So there was Gabrielle at the desk, humming in a deeper but tuneless as always timbre and filling up pages of a notepad with possible slogans and ideas for that alliance thing she and Sam had been talking about. (The nice thing about notepads and pencils, she had to concede despite the strange flimsy feel of the paper, was not feeling guilty about using so much parchment on a mistake. Which was to say whatever ideas ended up being worth keeping? So going on parchment.)

[OOC: OCD-free today, ZOMG, and Michael Pitt!Gabrielle is around all except during 3rd period.]

Alpha Beta Gremlin meeting; Wednesday [ 09/23 ].

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

There were benefits to having been here a long time, and one of those benefits was an utter lack of surprise to wake up and find yourself looking a little different and with all the wrong parts. In fact, Turtle considered herself such an erudite Fandomite that she, upon waking and finding herself a cute floppy haired boy again, found that the timing was excellent, as this would make for an interesting spin on the Alpha Beta Gremlin meeting.

Assuming enough of the girls weren't too busy freaking out, anyway.

"Hey, guys," she said, letting the obvious irony lace the the word. "Hopefully, by this late in the day, you've realized that we're not quite ourselves. This makes a meeting on sisterhood kind of ironic. So, instead of using the meeting today for sisterly business, I thought we'd take the opportunity to embrace our current forms and take a peek into fraternity life, instead. So I've got pizza, root beer,"--it was a school club, guys, "--Cheetos, footballs, some sports game on the TiVo. I encourage you to belch, scratch, and talk about...I don't know, girls or something. Basically, today, we're just going to be men, so that we can better appreciate how much better it is being women."


[[ OCD on the way has just won a belching contest! ]]

Infantry Tactics [Wednesday Second Period]

[furious-maximus.livejournal.com]

Max didn't comment on the fact that many of his students were male today when they had been female in all the previous weeks. Fandom did that. Max also didn't start the class today with a run. No, instead he waved at a stack of scuta. "There's one of these for each of you. So go ahead and grab one." Over three feet tall and two feet wide, even made mostly of plywood the things were impressively heavy. "There are bands to fit your arms through on the back," which he trusted they'd see. "Affix the shield to your left arm. Even if you are right handed." Max looked around. "Remember, one of the keys to regular infantry are that they are regular. Shields are always on the left."

He waited a minute or two for people to get their shields on, then grinned. "Okay, now we run." Max held his own left hand straight at his side, not allowing his shield to move much as he led off. "The size and weight of the scutum is intended to provide maximum safety without sacrificing mobility. Unlike me, most of you are small enough that if you were to crouch slightly you could cover almost your entire body with the shield. You'll also notice the way they curve around you. This makes it easy to stand close enough to someone that your shields will overlap without leaving easy gaps for the enemy to exploit."

"There is an important reason that you wear your shield on your left side, and that is because when you are in formation you will cover whoever stands to your right. You will rely on your shield and whoever is to your left to keep that side of you safe, and you will ensure that the person to your right is not overwhelmed. If they misstep, or lose their footing, or covering the person on their right, or are engaged with one enemy already, your job is to ensure that they have the time they need to recover by engaging anyone who seeks to take advantage of their distraction."

Max turned to look over his shoulder as he ran. "Understand this: defending the person on your right takes precedence over defending your own life. This is not to say you will die, because whoever is on your left will be doing the same for you. This tactic does a number of things: it allows you to take risks because you know that someone will defend you, and it forces you to trust one another. The unit is only as strong as its trust in its members, and having to give over the defense of your life to another concentrates that trust wonderfully."

He paused, looking over his students to see how they were handling running with the awkward shields.

"Today's exercise will be done in pairs. You will find a partner, and then simulated enemies will attack each pair. Your job is for both of you to survive. This is only a class, so no one will be physically injured, but if you allow your partner to be 'killed' then I shall be displeased." He grinned suddenly. "And, no, you will not be issued weapons. Your job is to survive, and cover each other."

"Fall out and pair up."

Adventures in Literature, Wednesday, Period Three [Class Four]

[carpe_demon]

Serious Drake was serious when the class began (seriously). He hadn't even noticed yet that the number of girls in the class was substantially reduced, while the number of boys had inexplicably increased. "OK," he said, moving in front of his desk and sitting back upon its edge, "first off, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry I upset some of you last week when I was talking about Arthur and the gang. I want to stress that this class is about works of literature -- fictional books, yes, though they just may have been inspired by real life people. Some people think Arthur really existed, others think he was a fictional construct of figures from history. In my world, he did exist, and he's just been reincarnated as a curly-haired moppet named Wyatt. And some of you know an Arthur and Merlin from another world. Point is, even if some of these people really did exist, the authors of some of the books we're looking at do have a tendency to take liberties and amp up the drama. None of these books are biographies or history books, they're all about action and adventure and passion and angst. So if we run across anybody else you might find familiar, take it with a grain of salt, and then take that grain of salt with a margarita."

( On with the lecture. )

Art 101 - Wednesday, Period Four - 9/23

[notsobadatall.livejournal.com]

Today, the room was made out to be a museum, or perhaps a palace of some sort. All throughout the room, there were statues, and on the walls, tapestries. Hanging elsewhere were numerous pieces of highly stylized art.

"Today, class, we won't be doing a slide show so much as having a discussion: what makes good 'art'?" He glanced around the classroom, smiling at each one of them as he walked around the room to point at a tapestry.

"Bhutanese art is highly stylized, with a very specific way of drawing and arranging pictures in the pieces. If you didn't know better, you might assume that every one of these pieces was by the same artist. They draw the eyes the same, they have very similar color choices, the arrangment is similar. I could stand here and bore you telling you who every single person in each of these is, or why these works are the way they are, but that is a subject best tackled in independent study. If anyone is interested, feel free to come by my office today.

"Instead, I would ask you all what we as artists might find in these pieces? Why do people make new paintings in such a similar style? This art is alive and well, for those wondering. These samples are older, but these paintings are still made. Can you think why? Where is the 'art'? Where is the stamp of the artist? Is there one? Or even, does there need to be one?"

He spread his hands.

"Discuss."

[ocd up!]

Ethics [Thursday, September 24, 1st period]

[sith_happened]

"Today we talk about envy," Anakin said quietly. "There's always something that someone else seems to have that we want: clothing, grades, family, love, looks, acclaim...their achievements remind us of something we don't think we have enough of." He began pacing as he warmed to his subject. "A wise man once said that envy is the art of counting the other person's blessings instead of your own. An entire industry has sprung up and flourished exploiting the idea that we envy those who have achieved fame." Anakin made a face. "With the equally charming dark side that we'll take joy in watching their failures."

He crossed his arms over his chest. "So today, like the squirrels of the radio, we'll be gossip mongers. Come up with a story about one of the people in this class, in the school, or on the island. It doesn't have to be true. It just has to be something that would get people's attention. Then pass it on. We'll see the ramifications of envy for ourselves."

He was kind of counting on the students choosing to start rumors about people they didn't like. He knew human nature that way.