fandomhigh | Diversity and You, Class #1, Period #2, May 7th

The woman standing in front of class looked mostly human. She had candy-pink skin that was too uniform to be a sunburn, and prominent horns sticking out of her forehead; the points of her ears just barely peeked out on either side of her head. Her hair was a bright fiery red, jutting upwards at implausible angles in proud streams. Other than that, she'd fit in at any corporate office, especially dressed as she was today, the white button-down shirt to the pencil skirt and the strappy black shoes. Give her a hat and a slight palette swap and no one would know the difference.

"First things first," Callie said. "Some of you may not want to be here. I don't care. I don't want to be here, but Daddy lied to me. Oh, by the way: if you're signing a contract with a demon? Get a lawyer to look over it. Maybe two. At any rate, I don't really feel like dealing with cranky teenagers this early in the morning, but apparently I can't kill any of you, so do your best to keep it to a dull roar. And unless you've got a better excuse than 'I was sent here by the Dark Lord and Ruler of Hell who is personally mocking me,' you're not getting out of class, and don't waste my time."

And a warm welcome to all of you!

"Now apparently this class is called 'Diversity and You,' a.k.a., some bleeding-heart touchy-feely garbage about how we're all different but we can try our best to hold hands and all get along anyway. Good for us. There, class is finished. I don't know how I'm supposed to stretch this out for the next several weeks, so I'd expect a lot of filler if I were you. It's not like I got to pick the subject. If I had, it would have been something interesting like 'Flaying 101: Finding the Right Tool for the Job.'"

She happened to collect weapons. She didn't judge your hobbies.

"I found out about this class on Saturday, so I haven't exactly had time to prepare anything, so let's be ridiculously cliche and do introductions. Tell everyone what species you are, although it looks like most of you are human." Except for the cat, at least ~~if Bucky was there~~. "If you're not human and you don't want to talk about it, just lie and say you are, or make up something else, and then, I don't know, tell us something interesting about yourself. And try to make it something actually interesting instead of just the fact that you play the harmonica, because nobody really cares about that. Although who knows, maybe someone else in class also plays the harmonica, even though you're human and she's secretly a flesh-eating bacteria sent here to destroy the world, and you'll end up having crazed sex in the hallway. Diversity."

If she eyerolled any harder, it might actually induce vomiting.

"So ... let's do that, and not think about how we're sitting here in class doing this and not something useful with our time, like opening the clothing store we came here to run that is just sitting there with all those crates of shoes unboxed." Someone was entirely not bitter, you guys.

"Oh, last thing, is there a See-fer ... Sigh-fer ... something like that, here?" she asked, holding up a scrap of paper she'd brought in with her. "I got this notice, something about being assigned a graduate student as a TA. And apparently I can make one of you a TA as well. Is that anything like a minion? Anyone want to be a minion? I won't take your soul. I'll even put it in writing."

She was being sincere. You had to have your parents' permission to sell your soul, if you were under eighteen. And that was probably just as frowned on as killing students, anyway.

(please wait for OCD!)

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"Oh, geez," Butters groaned quietly to himself when he realized that it was his turn; he hadn't been paying as much attention as he should, since all the flashbacks from the Death Camp of Tolerance were flitting back to his head. But he shifted a little and got to his feet and started to nervously introduce himself.

"Well, I, uh, my name is Butters Stotch," he started, "I'm fifteen years old, I'm a human being, and I..." He drew in a deep breath. "I'm a survivor of Tolerance Camp. I grew up in South Park, Colorado with my mom and dad and I just started going to Fandom High last year. It's just about the best school ever. Also, diversity is very good and it's very important to be tolerant of people who are different than you."

If that last line sounded rehearsed, that's because it was, and his eyes flicked nervously to Miss Maggotbone as if he half expected her to yell at him and tell him to say it again.

"Um, thank you."

Well, that was ... interesting, to say the least. Um.

"Okay, here's a good lesson in diversity," she said, brightly. "I'm a succubus, yes, but that doesn't mean I'm automatically going to eat your face off or drag you to the depths of Hell. I mean, we might go on a shopping trip, later, but New Hell has some amazing -- that's not the point. Look, kid, I'd skip 'tolerant' and settle for 'not about to shit your pants' right now, can we try that?"

"Er, well, no, ma'am," said Butters, shifting uncomfortably and looking down at his shoes for a moment, "it's not so much that you're a demon or a succubus or from H-E-double hockey sticks or nothin'. That's okay. I mean, I don't think it's very nice to try to suck people's souls by havin' sex with them or marrying them, but, if you do, that's your perogative. No, ma'am, it's not that that makes me almost about ready to...er...shit my pants right now as much as it is just the fact that you're a diversity teacher."

And a shudder ran through him, pulling out deep, horrible memories.

"Just please don't make up draw diversity pictures all day, Miss Maggotbone, please!"

Okay, the trauma was delicious. And yet, kind of bizarre. A weird hybrid, like chocolate mixed with steak. The end result was not something you'd want to roll around in your mouth for very long.

"... Diversity pictures," she repeated. "Okay, there's ... no art component to this class. What, exactly, did you think you were going to have to do, here?"

"'Here, we will work, every hour, of every day, until we submit to be tolerant of everybody,'" Butters quoted, in a vaguely German accent. "'Here, intolerance will not be tolerated.'"

"Like that," he explained, "only just one hour of one day of the week, on account of us havin' to go to other classes. I was really hopin' it wouldn't be like Tolerance Camp, ma'am, so if you could do that, that'd be real nice of you. But I'm real good at tolerance! I promise!"

Sounded like Mark could take lessons from those people. On efficiency, if nothing else. Apparently fear was a good motivator?

Except, of course, that Mark was too much of a squishy liberal to do it up properly with German accents and scary threats. Sigh.

Speaking of, this kid made Mark look world-weary. His soul had to be huge. It was like he just wanted to be corrupted.

... not like that. He was still, like, twelve or something.

"I believe you," she said smoothly. "I mean, here you are, convinced I'm going to abuse you in some fashion, and you're still calling me ma'am. I'm touched, Butters. But we don't practice diversity that way here. I think maybe you've got entirely the wrong idea about demons."

"Butterscotch is a crappy flavor," Bucky commented. "Not, like, licorice bad, but it's close. It's probably vegetarian."

"Okay, sure, whatever, Mister Kitty Cat," Butters grunted a little, frowning as he folded over his chest. "You don't even know the words to the Chicken Dance."

"That's because there AREN'T any!!! Look, the Chicken Dance was first performed many decades ago by my Native American ancestors in order to lure chickens to their doom. It's a time-honored tradition passed down through the ages, and even if there WERE any words, they'd be in some weird gibberish language, and not normal American."

Just for the record: absolutely none of that was true. Bucky had made it up on the spot. Also, he now believed that it WAS true, because he'd just heard someone authoritative say so. Oh, the wonders that a short attention span plus a lack of critical reasoning skills could bring.

Diversity and You, Class #1, Period #2, May 7th

Re: Introductions. This is super original. - DIV01

Re: Introductions. This is super original. - DIV01

Re: Introductions. This is super original. - DIV01

Re: Introductions. This is super original. - DIV01

Re: Introductions. This is super original. - DIV01

Re: Introductions. This is super original. - DIV01

Re: Introductions. This is super original. - DIV01

Re: Introductions. This is super original. - DIV01

Re: Introductions. This is super original. - DIV01