How to Win Friends and Influence People | Friday, period 1

[nuclear_snide]

Kanan had a techinicolor dalmatian with him today. He seemed less perturbed about that fact than even he felt like he should be, but he couldn't quite shake the thing, and he hadn't managed to nerve himself to dragging it back off the island and leaving it with its own kind again before the island had moved on.

That, and it cried whenever he left it behind in the apartment.

"How to win people to your way of thinking," he began, and then set the book down on the desk. "This chapter is full of things like 'avoiding arguments' and 'let the other person talk a lot.' Oh, and my personal favorite, 'let them think that your idea was their idea.'" Or something like that, anyway. Kanan was paraphrasing. He shook his head a bit. "And yeah, I guess people do love listening to themselves talk, but the amount of seeding you'd have to do in a conversation to make a person have the exact same idea as you while they're doing all the talking seems less like work and more like some kind of top spy espionage or something."

"Things like that tend to work best in arguments," Bob said. "Get them really annoyed, and they'll agree to things before they know what they're doing. Emotions are your tools." He grinned.

Kanan shook his head.

"A little pleasantness can go a long way. And actually taking into consideration the person you're talking to. You want to win someone over, engage them in a situation where they're comfortable and not on their guard. Ask 'em out for caf. Coffee." He gave Bob a side-eye, and then sighed. "Or you could bribe them."

That seemed to be an answer that came up a lot this semester already, okay?

It was a time-honored tradition! It worked!

"Trickery's a great way, too," Bob offered. "If they're not the sort to be won over by pure logic - if they are, well, there you go, just find a logical argument - get them to feel sorry for you, or as I said, annoy them, or just get them up in arms about something unrelated. Overly emotional people are less likely to accurately judge the worth of what you want. Get them on your side or violently against you, and they're easy to manipulate."

Which he'd actually learned from hundreds of years of manipulating people with talking, and not simply from watching politicians.

"So, pair up again, and pick something interesting, then try to get your partner to agree to your point of view. Any questions?"

Comments

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

"Not poisoning them is good. Though -- I mean, he is an alien dog. He might not be like Earth dogs, if that's what you're looking up." Earth dogs didn't come in those colors. As much as some folks liked to groom them to look like that, anyway. "Lincoln kinda came pre-trained. And you don't really train cats. But I think animal training's supposed to be pretty much the same whatever the species?"

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

"I considered that, too," Kanan sighed. "The food thing, I mean. Considering where he came from, for all I know, he's supposed to be brought up on a steady diet of ice cream and pastries. But Earth dogs are closer to this guy than akk dogs, and even akk dogs eat meat."

He shrugged. "I kind of split the difference. He's eating chicken and eggs until I can be sure it's not making him sick. And the training part, I'll be starting right away. I've never really done it before, but he's smart and I'm stubborn. Hopefully that's a winning combination."

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

"Sounds good to me. I didn't really get a chance to explore the planet at all. Was it fun? It looked fun."

Well, to a fourteen year old girl it did, anyway.

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

"It was... colorful," Kanan decided, somewhat diplomatically, as he reached a hand up to scratch at his beard. "Everything was pretty friendly, at least. I was followed back to the island by a handful of friendly animals, Dog here is just the one who decided to stick around."

Probably for the best. Kanan really wouldn't have known what to do with a bear.

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

Other than maybe eat it?

"Yeah, that's what I got from radio. That's why I didn't try to go. I've . . . kinda already accidentally adopted enough aliens, you know?"

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

Or try to pawn it off on Doctor Lecter. One of those things.

"Your friend back home and your bubbly pet, you mean?" Kanan smiled faintly. "I didn't know there was an upper limit on aliens, but growing up in a different galaxy might have colored my view a little."

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

"Aliens in general, nah," Tip said. "Aliens I bring home that Mom eventually might have to take care of?"

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

"Okay, that's a bit different," Kanan allowed. "Probably. Unless your mom doesn't mind, I suppose."

He really had no idea what moms were and weren't supposed to do. He didn't exactly have memories of his own mother, after all.

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

"She's trying this whole 'responsibility' thing out," Tip said dryly. "I'm trying not to overwhelm her."

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

Well... that certainly painted a picture.

"Eesh," Kanan said, so very eloquently. "Right, no more strange aliens than one mom can handle at once it is, then. Or unfamiliar living things in general, I suppose."

After all, even Val was alien by Kanan's standards. It as all a matter of perspective.

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

"That's the plan. Though at least with J.Lo, she has someone at home now to remember me by."

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

"So there's less room for... what's the phrase? Empty nesting?"

Seriously. No experience with parenthood in any form whatsoever, right here.

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

". . . I guess?" That wasn't a phrase Tip had encountered much in her fourteen years so far, either. "I mean, me being here means we fight a whole lot less, so that's probably a relief. We've never had the most traditional mother-daughter relationship."

Actually, the fighting part was perfectly traditional for a mother and teenage daughter, but Tip still didn't entirely believe it.

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

"I... have no idea what a traditional mother-daughter relationship is supposed to look like," Kanan confessed. "But if this is working out better for the both of you, then I guess I can't knock it, either."

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

"Your ten year old daughter's not supposed to be the one who makes your doctors' appointments for you," Tip advised.

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan blinked. And then Kanan nodded.

"Fair enough. Though bonus points to you for having your poodoo together enough to handle that," he offered. "Ten's no age to be taking responsibility of somebody who really should know better."

Fourteen, however, was a perfectly acceptable age to go to war.

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

How about eleven? Was eleven a good age?

"It really helped when the next year she got abducted by aliens and I had to spend six months on my own."

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

"... That would do it, yeah." Kanan grimaced, but there was a little more empathy in that grimace than anybody should have for a situation like that. "You have her back, now. Was that your own doing, or did somebody else reunite you?"

He was genuinely curious, yes. Tip had it together more than a lot of kids her age who hadn't been raised in an order of laser sword soldier-monks.

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

"Little of both," Tip said. "Going to find her was how I met J.Lo. And when we got to the new Human Preserve, there was a whole network of people working to reunite families. But there was a whole continent of trying not to get caught or killed before we got there."

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

'Human preserve.'

...

Kanan looked appropriately horrified, at least.

"And things are better now?"

She did have a dog and a pet billboard, so he could probably assume they were, but he had to check anyway.

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

"Yeah. We helped the Boov get rid of the even nastier aliens that liked to kill them, so in return they agreed to leave Earth and pick a new planet to colonize. Better deal than most colonized populations get."

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan gave a low whistle at that, which mostly just got the dog looking up at him and buttwaggling again.

"Yeah, I'll say," he agreed. "I guess humans didn't really have much going for them on a galactic scale yet, huh? The Boov are the first alien race you've encountered?"

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

"Yeah. We'd barely gotten to the moon before."

Re: Talk to the teachers

[uncertain_dume]

"Ouch."

Seriously, ouch. Kanan was trying to imagine a planet that was so cut off from everything else, and living one's entire life in such a place. The island was the closest he got, and it physically moved itself from world to world.

"I've got experience with hostile combatants," he noted, looking thoughtful, "but I came from a place where we prepared for that sort of thing. Good on you for making it through. But at the same time, I'm sorry it was something you had to experience at all. Not that sorry changes anything, I know."

Re: Talk to the teachers

[intotheout]

Tip shrugged. "I got a best friend out of it. And thanks to Boov technology, Mom doesn't have to work all the time to pay rent and feed us both. It was pretty terrifying, but then. I mean, that's what life is like, right? Sometimes you get invaded by aliens, sometimes a monster turns you into an orange, sometimes you get pushed off a roof by someone trying to figure out human anatomy."

Tip had an odd perspective on what constituted a normal life.