fandomhigh | Ethics Class [Thursday, January 6, 1st period]

Anakin stalked through the classroom doorway precisely on time, his cloak swooping ~~overdramatically~~ in his wake. "I am Master Anakin Skywalker," he said as his eyes made contact with every student in the room, "and this is Ethics. Most teachers are spending this week making introductions. I do things slightly differently."

He began passing out a short story. "There's a very famous story on this world of the lady or the tiger. For those of you not from here, the short version is that there was a fictional king with his own sense of justice: instead of a court system, he had an arena with two doors. Behind one door was a beautiful woman, handpicked by the king. Behind the other was a tiger. If you chose the tiger, you were eaten and declared guilty. If you chose the lady, you were considered innocent and immediately married to the lady. The king didn't care about your previous marital status or sexual orientation, apparently."

He leaned back against his desk, though the posture of his back showed that he wasn't very comfortable with the idea of relaxing. "One day the king discovered that his daughter had been having an affair with someone far below her station, so the man was arrested and tossed into the arena. Now the princess knew which door had what behind it, and her lover looked up to her for advice. She had two choices: watch her love die, or watch him marry another woman. The story ends with the princess telling him which door to open, but leaves us hanging as to what waited behind it."

Anakin smiled. "Your task today is two-fold. First, pair up with a classmate--pick someone you haven't met yet--and decide what the princess did. Then tell me what you would have done in the princess's place."

He glanced around the room. "And I am looking for a teacher's aid or two if any of you are interested."

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"Then maybe they should overthrow him, or run away afterwards," he said, stubbornly. "What good would it do to talk gossip about her?"

"It's therapeutic," Quinn said, equally stubborn. "Yay revolution, all of that, but right now the princess is stuck with no boyfriend and a father who doesn't love her. Why does she have to be all nice about the other chick? What did she do to deserve it?"

"There's a big gap between being nice and being cruel," he retorted. "She could be working on ways to fix it. It's not his fault. Or the other girl's."

"You're such a boy scout," Quinn said, sounding bored and a little sulky. "You've never said something mean just to make yourself feel better? Besides, he could have run away with her before any of this happened. Or done a better job making sure they wouldn't get caught."

"And so she should just give up on him and start calling the other girl names?" Dolf asked, eying her. Yes, he was a complete boy scout, but shush. "What does that help? It's not going to make her feel any better for very long."

Quinn ... didn't have a good answer, though she still thought Dolf was being ridiculous about it. She could only defend an amoral position out loud for so long.

"Fine, don't lecture me," she said. "The guy gets the other girl, the princess goes home and talks to her father about why he shouldn't try to feed her next boyfriend to a tiger. All right?"

Being ridiculous about things like this had once nearly gotten Dolf set on fire, so...

Uh.

"Fine," Dolf echoed. Slightly mollified by that. But only slightly. "Though the people should really rebel to a king like that to begin with."

"Yeah, because that always works," Quinn said, shrugging it off. "Do you still have a king for real back home?"

There was a point there ... somewhere. Maybe. Mostly, it was that her European history knowledge was weak.

Edited 2011-01-06 16:46 (UTC)

"A queen," Dolf said, tryin to figure out why she was even asking. "We're a constitutional democracy."

Oh sure. Memorise those big words.

But how were you a democracy if you had a ... okay, Quinn wasn't going to ask for further definition of the big words.

"Just pointing out kings don't always get overthrown," she said lightly. "And maybe the princess can just wait her dad out and make things better when she's queen."

Give Dolf five minutes and he'd realised he'd meant 'monarchy', not 'democracy', but... eh.

"Of course they don't always get overthrown," he said, staring at her. "That would be stupid. But our queen's ancestor had to overthrow the king of Spain to make my country."

That stare gave Quinn a more-than-niggling feeling that she sounded stupid, so she stared back. "Did he like to feed people in tigers?"

Which was a moronic question, but at least it might get them vaguely on topic.

"No, but he liked to burn Calvinists?"

Ethics Class [Thursday, January 6, 1st period]

Re: Pair up with another student! [1/6]

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Re: Pair up with another student! [1/6]

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Re: Pair up with another student! [1/6]

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