fandomhigh | Defending Yourself [Monday, Period 1]

"Welcome back. Hope you all enjoyed your weekend." Max eyed his students. "And that you took the time to do your homework."

"Today's lesson is actually going to be short because I'm going to try leaving most of our time for some demonstrations, but there is something I'm hoping you all pick up on today: each of you has a set of instinctive reactions when threatened. Everyone has different ones, of course, but the lesson to learn is that most of them are useful. Maybe not all the time, or in all situations, and it's useful to be aware of when to fight your instincts, but it's also important to realize that no matter how new you all are to the concept, each and every one of you has some ideas about how to defend yourself. And not all of those ideas are bad ones."

"For instance," another look around, this time with a grin, "I gave you a homework assignment last week I gave you a homework assignment with very little guidance, and I'm willing to bet that you all managed to do it. And I also suspect that most of you came up with something the others didn't, if only because of the way you think about things."

"So let's see them. Everyone take a moment to show us what you've brought, and explain why you picked it. And feel free to talk ideas with each other."

And then Max's grin turned downright evil, and he nodded toward the door that wasn't part of the usual classroom setup (thank you, Danger Shop!). "While you're doing that, you'll find a list of your names in ~~totally random~~ order by the door. If you're at the top of the list, come on through for a personal evaluation." That totally wasn't going to be an ambush so that Max could evaluate your instinctive reactions to surprise attacks. Unless it was.

Hint: it totally was.

[Continuing my no-sign-in experiment! If it really is a problem for you, feel free to leave an OOC comment, or hit me up via email! Or AIM! Or LJ PM!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yes, this. I know having people do nothing but the sign-in isn't ideal, but just about everyone at some point is gonna hit weeks where that's all they can manage, time-wise. So it's nice to have that option there.

Agreed. And, at least for me, there are other concerns on top of time issues -- I've got an anxiety disorder on top of a depression disorder, and there are days where I can barely manage the spoons it takes to remember to sign in, much less interact with people -- virtually or otherwise. I don't know that anyone else in the game has my particular combination of concerns, but neuroatypicality is not exactly common in fandom-at-large, so it wouldn't surprise me if several other players had their own sets.

(Mental problems: gotta catch 'em all?)


answer2bheard, I'm not actually in this class, but I wouldn't be able to take any of Max's in the future, either, if there were no sign-in threads.

I must third this here. Some days there just isn't the brain space for anything more than work and RL. Not even having the option to establish your character there on those kind of days, well, kind of sucks.

I'm another person who isn't in this class, but "just sign in as the minimum" has always been the rule around here. No, it isn't ideal to have students just sign in week after week, but the answer to that is to make class more engaging or get to the heart of why class participation is down -- not to force people to participate via OCD.

Maybe I have a migraine, maybe So-and-So's mother is sick, maybe he stayed late at work, maybe she decided to take the day away from the game and catch up with old friends. Everyone has the right to put RL > RP when they need (or choose) to. If you have to tag into the body of class, you have to actually come up with IC responses, and then other players might tag you, and that commits you to threads, instead of firing up a browser and writing your character's name. Which is, sometimes, all I'm capable of.

I generally hate copy/pasting the same answer to multiple comments, but I feel like it applies here:

Thanks for the input! Seriously, don't let the copy/paste nature take away from my appreciation. Based on your, and other peoples' feedback, it's pretty clear that sign-in threads will be making a comeback next week. So I'm seriously glad you spoke up about it. Otherwise, how would I know?

So, again, thanks, and next week we'll have sign-in threads again!

Defending Yourself [Monday, Period 1]

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