fandomhigh | Coping With Change - Tuesday, Period One

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coping with change

Coping With Change - Tuesday, Period One

"Hello, everybody!" Cecil beamed and waved at the students.

//Ah, hello class,// Jono echoed, looking a little less enthusiastic but no less comfortable at the front of the room, fire and all. He didn't wave, just sort of gave a nod of his head. //Welcome to Coping With Change. I'm Jonothon, please, just call me Jon or Jono. 'Professor' is somebody else.//

"And I'm Cecil. You can call me Cecil, I suppose," Cecil said. "We're here to teach you all sorts of things about coping with change, and hopefully it'll be really useful." He had pulled the obvious straw for this class.

Jono gave Cecil an amused side-eye before deciding to pull the other straw and kick into a proper lecture.

//If you're in our class, it's probably likely that you've been through some manner of extreme change, or you're expecting one in the future. Maybe you're taking this class as a precaution, just in case something happens down the road. Or,// he sounded a touch wry, //you're here because of an office mix-up. Those happen. You're welcome to swap out if you feel as though you're in the wrong class, though it might be worth sticking around all the same. You never know; you might learn something.//

"And really, who doesn't have some sort of weird changes in their life, right?" Cecil asked. "I mean, there's puberty, and extra limbs, and city-wide calamities, and all sorts of things every year. It couldn't hurt to learn how to deal with them."

... The hell of it was, Jono could only just nod his agreement to that one. The other school he taught at had basically all of those things on a regular basis.

//For the duration of this class, you can expect not only theory, but also candid discussion as to how that theory can be applied to your own personal situations. Cecil and I won't require you to share anything sensitive with the room at large, though of course you're welcome to contribute to the conversations with personal experience if you feel comfortable doing so. And if you don't but you'd still like somebody to talk to who might be outside of your situations, Cecil and I are both willing to make the time. I even keep rum on hand to bribe the squirrels for privacy, if you'd rather things not end up in the morning gossip.//

Whereas Cecil was likely to broadcast everything. Not that he was on radio at the moment. It was habit.

"So let's start by finding out who we all are!" Cecil said. "Well, who everybody else is. Unless you don't know who you are, either, in which case, just give us a name to call you by until you figure it out."

//If you'd like to share with us your reasons for taking this class, or any changes that you've been through or are expecting to go through that you'd like to be able to apply this to, please, feel free, but don't feel as though you have to, either. And before anybody asks, no, the telepathic speech doesn't mean I'm reading anybody's minds.//

Look, he got that question at least once or twice a year. Better to cut it off at the pass now.

"Or me," Cecil added. "That would just be rude." Also impossible. But still worth stating.

[OOC: Open!]

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Yeah, Jono could basically smell that repression from a mile away, but he was going to let it slide. He was actually here to do the opposite of scarring his students for life, after all.

//You know, I actually have some experience with that sort of thing,// he offered, //only... going the other way. And with the occasional bonus unicorn. I imagine there's no small amount of culture shock to deal with right now. If there are any aspects of modern Earth that you want to ask about, feel free. I'll do what I can to try to help put things back into perspective for you.//

"Well, now that I know that everyone's balls drop the same across time and dimensions, I feel a little better," Hyacinthe said with a laugh. "...Unicorns?"

//We have the important conversations in these classes, it's true.// Jono rolled his eyes, though he at least looked amused about it. //And... yes, unicorns. Horses with a single spiral horn on their head?//

He couldn't quite tell if Hyacinthe was asking what they were, or if he was ascertaining that Jono wasn't pulling his leg about them. Better to err on the side of caution? He still sort of assumed that if a man who was talking directly into your brain while on fire said something unbelievable, that unbelievable thing was probably somewhat less ridiculous by comparison.

Yeah, most of Terre D'Ange's mythology centered around angels and the Hellenic myths, not random creatures. "Like a rhinoceros?" he asked, uncertain if this was another odd translation glitch, like England for Alba and Jesus for Yeshua.

Well, unicorns WERE often symbolic of Christ. You never knew what might carry over.

//No... like a horse, about this high, has a mane, says-// And that was very definitely a horse sound, there. Telepathy was useful that way. //- but with a horn. And they're fiercely intelligent.//

It was possible the Yeshuites had unicorns in their stories, but Hyacinthe knew few enough to exchange even a passing conversation in the Cockerel with. Yeshuite doctors were expensive and their brand of scholarship wasn't to the taste of most of the denizens of Night's Doorstep.

"Are they residents of the island, too?" Hya asked. "Like the literate squirrels and the oddly-hued deer?"

Jono actually had to pause for a moment to think about that one.

//Ah, no,// he settled on. //I don't think there are any unicorns on the island at the moment.// Just wait a week, that would change. //There is sometimes a pink pony who teaches here, but I don't think that's quite the same.//

No, not really.

//For what it's worth, I think unicorns are considered legend in most realities. Just stories.//

"...Is the pony related to the deer?" Shemhazai's Grace, this was all confusing.

Sorry, Hya. Confusing was kind of what Fandom did.

//Ah, no. She's also from a different world. I think most people there are ponies, not humans, but I never really did get the particulars out of her about that one.// A pause. //It's probably best to not think too hard about the pony, honestly.//

"I've quite lost the main thread of our conversation," Hyacinthe admitted after a moment of trying to wrap his head around a teaching pony and failing.

Jono also needed to take a moment to backtrack.

//... Right. I spent some time in a world with quite a few cultural differences, as well. And unicorns. Which aren't relevant to the 'culture-shock' point too much.//

"How did you adjust?" Hyacinthe asked, ready to be done with unicorns, as they led to talks of pink ponies. "Was there sommat you could suggest?"

Jono tilted his head a little, considering.

//Culture shock is a bit tricky,// he noted. //But I think a few things that helped the most were having friends around that I could lean on, learning everything I could about the place and the people, and just carving out little corners of the familiar for myself whenever I could.//

He was going to leave out the war part. Now seemed like a bad time for that one.

//Fandom is a bit difficult to nail down, culturally, but reading a few books about America's history and its cultures might help put a few things into perspective. And if there are things that you do from home, perhaps try sharing those with the people around you, too. For me, I had music, and the people I met while I was there," at war, "listened, and offered music of their own in turn. A sort of middle ground."

Hyacinthe thought over much of how he spent his days. He managed his circle of informants, ran errands for coin, helped his mother as best he could, hoped to see Phèdre, and flirted and laughed with the folk of Night's Doorstep. His evenings were often spent in the Cockerel, drinking and bragging and telling tales, being the Prince of Travelers that everyone expected of him.

"Much of what I did does not whether the distance between worlds and times well," he said carefully. His classmates didn't need to know that since he'd been a boy, he'd spent a great deal of time working to give coin to his mother. Her laundry kept them housed, his earnings kept them fed and allowed them to put a little by to one day purchase the building they lived in. "You have so many gadgets and devices that much of what I did is moot."

Faucets instead of wells, that delivered hot water on command and in copious quantities. Cell phones were faster than even the speediest of messengers. Electric stoves and microwaves prepared food in minutes, if not faster.

"'Tis a world of marvels, enough to make even Shemhazai envious" he said. "But marvels are not much for familiarity."

//Sometimes finding a niche involves carving one,// Jono noted, looking at the boy thoughtfully. //Got any talents or hobbies? Whether there's a modern equivalent or not is irrelevant, just for a moment.//

... Jono was absolutely willing to brainstorm. Lookit him go.

[And now, work SP!]

"Oh many, and some few even fit for sharing with teachers," Hyacinthe said with a glint of mischief in his eye. "I've a flair for storytelling, a skill at drinking, a deft hand for pouring and--"

For a moment, he nearly mentioned his skill with the dromonde but he had yet to become comfortable with letting people know of it.

"--An eye for horseflesh," he said, though it wasn't as smooth a recovery as he would have liked.

[And sleep for me!]

//Well,// and don't think Jonothon didn't catch that fumble, Hya, //there are a couple of bars in town. If you haven't been to Caritas yet, you ought to go.// Was that a bad thing to tell a student? Ah, well. //And storytelling might seem like it's been taken over by television these days, but you'd be surprised how many people still enjoy a good tale over a drink or around a campfire.//

He inclined his head a little.

//And there are horses on the island, as well. Most mechanical replacements for those don't exactly work so well on narrow streets full of stairways.//

Or he'd be riding his motorbike damn near everywhere.

He'd been going for something dirty, honest!

Look, just because he told fortunes for coins back home didn't mean it was a bad idea to keep a lid on his abilities until he he had a better feeling for the island.

"People trade horses on the island?" he asked, intrigued. "There's a livery?"

//Mate, what I know about horses that don't talk back is mostly limited to 'I'm absolutely not made for riding them,'// and he'd learned that one during the war, too, //so I've got no bloody clue what people do with the horses on the island. But it might be worth stopping by the Gig - across from Selkie Lake - at some point to have a look around. At the very least, it might be something familiar. That can't hurt. I believe there's a stable on the dorm grounds as well, though I don't think any of the current crop of students is keeping anything in there at the moment.//

Most of them really just didn't seem like the horses type.

"Perhaps," Hyacinthe mused. "How much could a stable have changed? Or a tavern? Those might be just the places to get a sense of the familiar."

The zombie band could only help, right?!

//There'll still be some differences,// Jono noted, mostly because of said zombies, //but at the very least it's a start. And it's summer, you're all off to the camping arrangements, right? If there's a campfire, that can't be a bad place to share your stories, either. That is generally what campfires are for, anyway.//

"I wouldn't know," Hyacinthe said with a laugh. "I've never been. I'm a city boy, through and through."

Not that camping was seen as a leisure activity in Terre D'Ange. People mostly just called it 'travel.'

//You should, then,// Jono replied, amused. //Plenty of people find that fire adds an extra air of drama.//

And then he paused for a moment, and added a little more sheepishly, //Which, I promise, isn't actually a bias talking.//

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Coping With Change - Tuesday, Period One

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