fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

Entry tags:

!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

Whoever worked their magic to ensure that the welcome picnics had nice weather had cut their mojo very close this time around. The weather was lovely today - sunny and hot enough to make it clear that summer in Fandom had finally begun - but the overnight thunderstorms had left puddles all over the lawn that hadn't quite dried up yet.

Still, the tables and chairs had managed to be scattered around, along with the buffet table of ~~moddable~~ food and drinks, and the information table with name tags, the Big and Little Sibling list, and the list of new roommates. The only thing missing was people to enjoy the festivities!

[OCD is up! This is part one of the picnic, specifically for meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here in an effort to keep browsers from breaking for as long as possible. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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"So not the usual bus driver, then," Raven guessed. "I thought it was pretty strange."

That was a massive understatement.

"It'll probably seem kind of normal after you've been here a while," Jessica said. "The Dean of Students, Skywalker, I think he's usually the bus driver. He's an actual human being. His only thing is that he likes flowy cloaks and capes."

Well, not his only thing.

"Capes can be very fashionable," Raven said. "Is Skywalker his first or last name? Doesn't he make you call him 'Mister'?"

The school had looked pretty modern in the brochures, but that seemed downright bohemian.

"His full name is Anakin Skywalker," Jessica said. "I'd probably call him Dean Skywalker if I was talking to him, but when I'm just talking about him? Eh." She even did a little hand motion with it.

Not too bohemian, then. Raven was almost disappointed. "Works for me," she decided. "How are the other teachers? Are they all into cloaks?"

"A few of them are. I also saw a couple in superhero costumes, because that's a thing here. But mostly they're... well, fairly normal," Jessica said. "A bunch of them will actually have you call them by their first names, though. Whether that's because they went to school here or because they're just generally low-key depends on the person."

Superheroes. That was the second time today someone had brought up superheroes. "So those are a thing in this world, too," Raven said. "I'm starting to think my world's just deficient."

Give it a few decades, Raven. Your world will catch up.

"Don't look at it as a deficiency. Look at it as relative sanity," Jessica said. "I come from a place with superhumans and mutants and aliens and extradimensional dictators, and it's all kinds of crazy. It's nice to spend this much time in a calm place."

After a moment, she amended that last sentence. "Well, calmer. Everything's relative."

". . . Mutants?" Raven's voice dropped close to a whisper on that one. She'd never heard anyone but Charles talk about mutants before, especially not in the same context as superheroes.

People here talked about mutants. Well, and called them crazy, but they were mentioned.

She was a little bit boggled.

In fairness, Jessica called herself crazy, too. She was being inclusive!

"Yeah. They're pretty much just like the other superhumans, only they were born with their powers, and that makes people insanely bigoted against them for some reason," Jessica said. "I don't get it and I will never get it."

"They think they're monsters," Raven said, before realizing that the venom in her tone miiiiight be the slightest bit of a tip-off. "I mean, I'd guess," she said, trying to cover. "That's how it would be where I'm from, at least."

"And a couple of them kind of are really, really horrible," Jessica said, a little surprised by Raven's tone. "But you compare those numbers with the percentage of people who give themselves powers with science and go off the deep end, and I think mutants have some statistics to point at and say, 'Hey, those jerks are the ones causing the real issues! Turn those robots off already and leave us alone.'"

"They send robots after mutants?" That didn't sound good. "Are you sure you're not from a science-fiction novel?"

"Believe me when I say that I live in a world that HG Wells couldn't have imagined if he was tripping on LSD," Jessica said.

"So the pink pony's kind of normal to you, then?"

"Actually, that one's still a little weird," Jessica said. "But less weird than she is for a lot of people, I'm sure."

"It's actually almost reassuring," Raven confessed. "If there's a pink pony here, then nothing I do can be that weird, right?"

"That's the attitude!" Jessica said encouragingly. "And almost everyone has their weird things. Sometimes, I think the completely normal people from sane worlds feel like the real weird ones."

"I guess if there were enough of the ones from superhero worlds, they would be."

Charles would have a fit studying all this.

"Well, we also have people from space. So add that to the superhero worlds, and, yep, the completely normal people from completely normal places are way outnumbered," Jessica said. "But they get used to the weirdness fast enough. Out of necessity, really."

"Does anyone just decide to go back home?"

"Sometimes, I think. I mean, I don't know if they're too freaked out by everything or if they have their own things going on at home, but not everyone makes it to their graduation," Jessica said.

That almost made it sound sinister. "How long have you been going here?" Raven asked.

"It'll be a full year this fall," Jessica said. "Assuming I don't have my own things going on at home that mean I need to go back for more than a weekend. I'm pretty sure that won't happen, though."

"So you like it, then?" Raven asked. "I can handle superheroes and ponies and things if it's a nice place to live."

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