Cooking for Camp and Field; Friday, First Period [06/11].

[chef_chocobro]

Ignis was rather pleased to find that the weather that day was rather cool and rainy, which generally made for a miserable camping experience and, therefor, helped make things feel much more authentic. Not only that, but it meant that the students could practically apply the things they learned last week, as he had them all gather underneath a tarp with their supplies in their spot in the preserve.

"Today," he explained to them, "will be a relatively simple day. Thanks to the cooperation of the weather," he gave an almost sardonic sort of gesture toward the world as a whole, "we can re-established our campfire building skills even in the dampest of conditions, which will hopefully serve you well as we work on two relatively simple recipes that will provide for a hearty and comfortining meal when one find themselves in less than favorable conditions when out on the field. Sometimes, all you need is a nice, hearty meal in your stomach to make things not all so gloomy after all. So I'll give you all some time to prepare a station, and then we shall begin."

Blacksmithing Basics; Friday, Third Period [06/11].

[special_rabbit]

"Morning, everyone," Amaya greeted the class with a nod and a readying pound of her fist into her palm to indicate that they'd be getting right into things. "At this point, we should all have knives that actually resemble knives, and, with a little more sharpening, will probably work like knives, too, but we're not quite finished yet. Not unless you want a knife that's going to be less than pleasant to use by having a bare tang. Which is why today, we're going to be working on making some nice handles for our knives!

"Well," Amaya flashed them a faint grin, "to get started on the handles, anyway."

It was a process!

"So! For the sake of the class and the beginner's nature of the whole thing, we're going to keep it very simple and work with wood. I've got a few types here for you to choose from, all of it either hardwood or what's called stablized wood, which is wood that has been dried and hardened with a variety of chemicals. If you need help choosing, I can break down the benefits of the different types we have here, but they're all good choices, and,a t this point, it'll mostly be about aethetics more than anything else.

"Once you've picked out your wood, we'll get started! First thing you'll want to do, obviously, is measure out what you'll need against the tang--remember, that's the term for the handle part!--of your knife..." So Amaya broke down all the dimensions and cutting they'd need to take at first...and then the measuring and cutting they'd need to do after that...and then the measuring and cutting they'd have to do after that, until they had a nice block of wood that had plenty of room still to work with that would match the tang nicely.

"Once you're at that point, you'll be boring some holes into your wood to create a nice little niche for the tang to fit into. Of course, with the drill," all hand, by the way, no power tools in this workshop!, "you're going to create a circular hole, but you've got a rectangular tang, so with the help of a nice serrated broach to carve out our space. And this is the part where you have to be carefully, because it's a lot of work, but you've got to get it just right, and if you don't? Well! Back to the woodblocks, and it's a good thing we've got a lot of 'em, because it definitely does take some doing!

"Once you actually do have a good fit," Amaya said, reaching for one she prepared earlier so that they wouldn't all be waiting on her drilling and carving, "you'll have this," she held up the dagger blade stuck into the large block of wood, "ridiculous looking thing. Obviously, a lot of this is going to be cut away to make for a more reasonable handle. Which hopefully we'll get to before we leave today, depending on how well you all manage your holes. I'll definitely check your fit before we continue with that part, though, and then we'll go over how to check exactly where we'll need to carve, and then we'll get to cutting! And that should bring us to the end of our day and we can get to fancying it up next week.

"Any questions or anything to go over before I let you all get started on your handles?"

Cupcake Skirmishes, Period 3, Friday 6/11

[stykera]

Yet again, cupcake class was meeting in the Home Ec room. That was where the ovens and ingredients lived so it only made sense.

“Today,” Stark said, then stopped, frowning at the box in front of him. He was going to check inside the box to make sure that it actually held what he thought it was going to before he started talking. He didn’t want a repeat of last week. Not that part of last week anyway.

“Right. Good. Today, candy cupcakes!” Because what cupcakes needed was more sugar, right? Stark though, Stark always needed more sugar. “Actually, piñata cupcakes. You don’t have to fill them with candy. You could fill them with sprinkles.” Which was really just more sugar, honestly.

“It’s just a cupcake with a hole in the middle,” he explained. “You cut out a piece and then you can fill it with candy, or sprinkles. Or something else entirely.” If anyone filled their cupcakes with meat or vegetables Stark might start yelling so it was best if nobody tried that.

“I have recipes for chocolate cupcakes or vanilla. Other flavors would work.”

He reached into the box then and started pulling out various moddable candies. “I have M&Ms, Skittles, Reese's Pieces, sprinkles, so many sprinkles, and...licorice? I don’t recommend using that.” Unless you really wanted to. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, he’d just tried absinthe yesterday.

“So. Candy-filled cupcakes. I can help if you need it.”

Paintball!, Friday, June 11, 2021 [6th period]

[imafuturist]

This week's class was taking place in the Danger Shop. Because they didn't have the strange resources that the dean did and also, less clean up that way. It was a mess of mirrors all over the place, set up like a deeply confusing maze on top of the usual obstacles and hiding spots.

Because the teachers were cruel like that.

"Welcome back to paintball," Tony said. "As you can see, we like to keep this fresh and exciting for you all."

"And because you are all really good at paintball," Steve said with a grin. "The mirrors should slow some of you down for a bit, thoug
"They're programmed, so you can't shatter them," Tony added firmly. Was he looking at the Hargreeves siblings? Yes. Yes, he very much was.

"Good call," Steve said approvingly. "Okay, everyone, get ready!"

So You Want to Be a Hero. [Friday, Period 5]

[misshapen_spark]

"Take a seat," Yang said, once everyone had trickled in. Today the Danger Shop was set up like one of the common rooms from the dorms, with plenty of comfy seating, and Yang sitting where the television normally was.

"Today, we're talking about the risks of being a hero," she said simply, her mechanical arm in her lap. "I lost my arm despite being essentially invunerable."

"But I'm not the only person I know who's lost something. Hell, I'm not the only person in my family."

"The woman who raised me went out on a mission when my sister was an infant and never came back. We have no idea what happened to her, and we buried an empty coffin. Madame Mallari, my physical therapist, lost both her legs in her career. I'm ninty percent sure my uncle has untreated PTSD -- post traumatic stress disorder -- from his missions. Some of my friends -- upperclassmen at my hero college -- came back from a mission so brutalized that they could barely walk, and some of them couldn't talk. Then, I lost half my peer group to a terrorist attack. I'm not just talking about my classmates; the best of the best of the aspiring heroes across the world were there. We lost an entire generation of heroes, who tried to take on a force they weren't equipped to handle, and their mentors who were trying to save civilians. And the civilain toll? Giantic."

"My headmaster, one of the most talented Huntsmen alive, died. My sister saw two of her best friends die, and is traumatized... which she decided to deal with by going after the woman responsible. She's out there, somewhere, on my planet, and I have no idea where she is at this moment, or if she's even alive."

"Because when you become an adventurer? A hero? You are not the only one risking something. You are risking everyone around you, because the 'bad guys' don't play fair. And they probably don't think they're the bad guys. Some of them? Think they're the heroes."

"What you need to understand is that you're not just risking losing every time you take up a bounty, or walk out a door with your weapon. It's not just 'your life.' You're risking everyone around you, and you need to understand that, and decide if the payoff is worth the risk."

"So today, we're watching a movie while you think about it. I'm around after class if you have questions."

Practical Philosophy, Friday

[endsthegame]

"There's always a time in this class, when it's been quiet, when we have to have the talk about justice," Ender said, settling down on the blanket on the lawn with a sandwich in hand.

"It's an old favorite of the human philosophers of old. When is it okay to judge something terrible or evil? They developed extensive theories on what made something good and right. Take the old Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Aristotle, who believed in what's called 'virtue ethics' - the idea that the character of the person defines the morality of his actions. Socrates argued, for instance, that if a person knew what was right, then he would do right. It was only not knowing what 'good' was that might cause someone to do evil."

"Then there were the stoics, who believed virtue laid in contentment, in being happy with what you're given, whatever it was. Opposite them, the hedonists, who believed 'good' was anything that made you feel happy. Later philosophers came up with the theory of consequentialism, the idea that your morality depends on the consequences of what you does. Some philosophers felt that good deeds were only good if they worked to better the country, for instance."

He sipped his bottle of water. "On the other hand, deontologists such as Kant believed that goodness came from doing, and the reasons someone might have to do something. If you were doing something out of duty, for instance, then according to Kant, you were doing some good. 'Nothing in the world can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will.' Your intentions are what make you good."

He sat back.

"As I said, we all make our judgments. Of ourselves, of the people around us, of their pasts - especially around here. On what do you base your judgments? I think most of us realize that there is no such thing as pure good and evil - but how we judge other people tends to depend a lot on what we were taught and where we come from."

Another faint smile.

"I personally believe that character is important," he said. "Once you try to understand what makes people do what they do, it becomes that much harder to see them as evil. After all, most of us do what we think is right, even if our ideas of what right is are different. And in doing these things, we inspire other people to act in their own way."