fandomhigh | Learnin' with Mr. Peanutbutter, Thursday, period 1

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Learnin' with Mr. Peanutbutter, Thursday, period 1

Mr. Peanutbutter was wearing glasses today. Not his sunglasses, no. Also, oddly, not his actual reading glasses. But a thick-framed set of prescriptionless glasses that he felt lent him a more scholarly air. He still hadn't received any notes on his performance in the first two episodes of the show, and he was starting to worry and make strange artistic choices.

Just wait until he decided to get himself a tweed jacket with elbow patches. It's gonna go great with his blue track pants and purple sneakers.

"Ah, welcome back, students!" he greeted when the bell rang. "It's time for another rousing educational adventure here at --" he looked to where he suspected one of the cameras might be hidden "-- Learnin' With Mr. Peanutbutter." He looked back at the class and adjusted his glasses. "Now I was thinking we ought to tackle math today. But I decided I still need to do a bit more research before I can really give that a proper go --" ie. he needed to rewatch Nice Bill Hunter again "-- so instead, let's take a look at a 'social' science high on everybody's minds in today's crazy culture: politics."

This would possibly end in tears.

"Now, I don't know a lot about politics, but I know what I like." He liked positive messages stated in self-important, commanding tones. "And I know that the way we tend to talk about politics these days can make them seem really tremendously boring." So boring. Why weren't the candidates talking more about sticks? They used to always talk about sticks. And speaking quietly. "It might seem to someone of your generation like modern politics has nothing to do with you. You just can't relate." The fact that to a large percentage of the class, modern politics really literally had nothing to do with them has still managed to elude him. "But if I've learned anything at all from Broadway, it's to project all the way to the back of the audience." He was great at projecting! "Also, that the way to make a political debate interesting is to make it into a rap battle. And rap is like poetry, only more fun! So today we're going to take those master poet skills we learned last week and apply them to the great political questions of our time!"

No, seriously, tears. Quite possibly Mr. Peanutbutter's.

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Ready for a cabinet meeting

Hyacinthe

Cassandra Pentaghast

Peridot

Rhys

Faith Connors

Steven Universe

Xanthippe Voorhees

Kuzco

Anders

Try to figure out what he's looking at when he glances to the side and at the ceiling.

What?

No, seriously, what?

There was nothing about this lecture Hyacinthe understood.

Cassandra, too, had absolutely no sense what the man was talking about. She eyed him dubiously, and with a little judgment.

... to be fair, her talent for politics more or less started with throwing books at people and ended at stabbing the books to make a point, so. There was that.

Faith was pretty sure half of this 'lecture' was in another language. She was also increasingly sure the teacher did a ton of drugs before showing up to class.

So, Xanthippe had missed the first two sessions of this class due to personal reasons.

So now, she was staring. A lot.

Mr. Peanutbutter has assigned you all to pairs already, and picked suitably controversial political topics for you to debate.

In rap form.

Topics:
Peridot/Cassandra: Taxation without representation
Xanthippe/Hyacinthe: The forgetfulness of elephants
Rhys/Khadgar: Is using a body-double cheating?
Kuzco/Faith: The best building material for walls
Steven/Anders: Bipartisanship
Hanna: Truthiness

Sorry, Hanna.

[ooc: please feel free to pick a side for your "debate" and prepare an opening statement or some such thing, even if your assigned partner hasn't pinged in yet. If/when actual arguing happens, that can just be a fun bonus.]

"I have no idea what we're doing."

Hello Xanthippe.

"I think I'm having a stroke."

Helplful, right? Look, Xanthippe was in Mr. Peanutbutter's class for the first time ever right now, and she was not even close to being adjusted to... any of it.

"The feeling does not go away," Hyacinthe told her. "I believe it actually increases, because you think you are prepared and then discover that you most certainly are not."

"A dog guy is expecting us to battle with rap," Xanthippe said, just in case the absurdity of the situation would lessen if she stated it out loud.

It did not. The creases on her forehead got deeper, though!

"At least you shall have the advantage over me?" Hyacinthe offered. "I have never used a...rap...weapon...before." Guess who had no idea what a rap battle was! "Nor have I any idea of what elephants do and do not remember."

"Taxation without representing what?" Cassandra asked dubiously. "This is nonsense."

Peridot was going to see that statement, Cassandra, and raise you a "What is taxation?"

Because it was difficult to tax a race of people who didn't use currency in the first place.

"It is when a ruler commands his people to pay him a certain amount of their goods or currency, ostensibly so it can be used to benefit the realm," Cassandra said.

Still looking confused and annoyed about it.

"But that's a verb." Peridot's sticking point today was going to be, "You can't wrap a verb."

It was an intangible concept! There was nothing to wrap!

"One cannot wrap a verb," Cassandra echoed. It was a bizarre thing to say, but it was marginally less bizarre than anything else in the class, so she was going to grip on to it tightly as if it was sense. "Yes. Nor can one... represent one, can one?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Peridot agreed, mildly disgruntled. She'd suspected there was something not entirely okay with this professor, and today was cementing that suspicion tidily. "Unless you're using some manner of iconography, perhaps. I'm not certain how one would portray 'taxation' in mural form, though."

Gems were big on murals. It was a thing.

"Perhaps some form of theatre?" Cassandra ventured. "Pretending one is wrapping one's taxes...? It makes no sense." Beat. "I say we refuse the assignment and concentrate on something more useful."

Cass, you were no fun.

"I'm open to suggestions," Peridot replied, because most things that she could think of were more useful than resorting to mime.

There was a long pause, on Cassandra's part.

"I suppose I cannot simply leave to train in the salle," she muttered finally.

Peridot gave a resigned sigh as she nodded her head.

"And I can't go to continue my research on the composition of the stones by the island's rocky bits," she lamented. "Perhaps we could get away with picking something in the room and using it as a... a representation of taxation. And then wrapping it."

...

"In... something."

"A... coin perhaps?" Cassandra said, frowning. "And we could wrap it in a..."

She looked around the room. "...Piece of parchment?"

"Oh, or in a fist!" Peridot's expression brightened slightly. "Much simpler than parchment," whatever that was, "right? Just take the coin and wrap your fist around it, and then maybe we can get out of here."

Peridot was going to leave this one up to Cassandra, though, as she didn't have a coin or much of a fist to speak of. Fingers, sure. But a fist wasn't made of fingers alone.

Cassandra muttered something under her breath. "Hopefully this will solve this ridiculous matter," she said, louder, and reached into her pocket to take out a coin.

She closed her fist around it.

Then she opened her fist, put the coin back in her pocket, and nodded. "Let's return to our seats."

"Works for me," Peridot agreed. "And if the instructor decides that coming to that conclusion wasn't a battle, we can just throw the coin at him."

Violence! Problem solved!

... Look, it was the best that Peridot had. She really didn't do fighting if she didn't need to.

Don't worry. Cassandra most definitely did.

"Agreed," she said, nodding at Peridot. "It has been a pleasure working with you."

"Body-doubles for what?" Rhys asked. Because that was something that happened with a certain dead CEO.

"I don't understand this assignment at all," Faith sighed at Kuzco ~~if he was there~~.

"Well, that's not exactly new here," Kuzco pointed out. "We're pretending like a talking dog can teach."

"And that he knows what poetry is," Faith murmured, careful to keep her voice down so Mr. Peanutbutter wouldn't hear (but then, she had no idea how to account for dog hearing). "Do you even know what a rap battle is?" She wasn't quite tuned in to this aspect of Youtube culture just yet.

"Not a single idea," Kuzco admitted cheerfully. "Think he does?"

"Probably, but can't be sure," Faith said. "Maybe we could just stand here and do nothing and see if he comes over here."

"I'm extremely excellent at doing nothing, if I do say so myself," Kuzco said.

Faith smirked despite herself. "Great."

And she crossed her arms and stood in silence. Sullenly.

Kuzco...was extremely bad at silence. "So. This is just the weirdest class ever, right?"

But silence was so fun! It made it possible to do exciting things, like staring grumpily into space.

"I guess," she groused. "I only really have one other class to judge it against. That one's pretty weird too. But less."

At least the teacher was human.

"I've got this, the one about not doing anything, and...the culture thing I only half pay attention to," Kuzco said.

Try to get him to demonstrate what "rap" is, for instance. Since "like poetry only more fun" isn't the most useful description. . . .

That's right, Hamilton totally exists in Mr. Peanutbutter's canon. At least he's not trying to make anyone debate slavery or a war with France?

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Learnin' with Mr. Peanutbutter, Thursday, period 1

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Talk to Mr. Peanutbutter

OOC