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

Entry tags:

!event: welcome picnic

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

Thankfully, the weather on the island today was fairly nice for the tail end of December, but there was still a medium-sized bonfire going in the middle of the lawn, partly due to tradition and partly due to the potential for shirtlessness (which, Zoe supposed, was also tradition.)

The usual tables were set up with warm foods, nametags, and lists for the new and old folks to find each other. Once everything was set up, it was time to celebrate a new year and the start of a new semester!

[OCD is up! I'm consolidating this down to one post, so bring all your new and old folks over here! Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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"Are you kidding? We were these guys, once. We are so screwed up. If they're anything like us, they don't need the help."

The help getting more screwed up. Somehow. By virtue of Sparkle teaching them how not to die and stuff.

"We were already screwed up," Atton agreed, "That's my point. As long as you don't drag these kids out in front of the class and make them sing about their trauma or something, you're good."

Atton favored the 'I don't care who hurt you, just learn how to play a decent hand of pazaak' approach to teaching.

"Fandom does a good enough job making people sing about that shit already, and getting students to demonstrate their trauma for the class to see is Skywalker's job," Sparkle snarked.

Someone was never going to forgive that 'check your privilege' exercise. Ever.

"But... I mean, yeah, I'm not doing this in an attempt to make shit worse, I guess."

Atton shrugged. "Just teach them what you know," he said. "Don't ask them to do anything you wouldn't want a teacher asking you to. That's it."

To be fair, Atton's take on that one stretched a little around the edges, about things like 'making his students hike through the forest for an hour', but still.

"Okay," Sparkle replied. And then pulled in a deep breath. Exhaled again. "Okay."

Okay.

"Mind if, like, I use you as a sounding board for this sometimes anyway? I've never done this, and it's... definitely a topic, I picked."

Like, he couldn't have decided to teach a class about Broadway musicals of the 1940s or something? HE KNEW THAT STUFF TOO.

"Sure," Atton said easily. "I mean, all I'm teaching this time is how to shoot things, it's not exactly a drain on my school planning time."

Eeegh, shooting things. Sparkle did an impressive job of not doing a little squirmydance there on the spot, too Canadian to like the idea of guns on campus in basically any context, ever. Okay. Impressive not squirming job done.

"And if you change your mind, like, that's cool," he said, because go team 'bad at frank discussions about shitty places they'd been.' "I mean, it's a class about, like, urban survival skills. For, you know, homeless people."

Seriously, Sparkle. This was Fandom High. They would have let you teach a whole damn semester about different ways to prepare macaroni and cheese.

They had a gun range on campus. They had always had a gun range on campus. Considering what happened at Fandom, Atton thought it was insane they didn't even have weekly gun safety classes.

... but, y'know, he'd grown up in the middle of a war.

"Aw," Atton said, "You are such a bleeding heart, Sparks."

See? Sparkle also thought the gun range was nuts. But given that he'd also saved his own ass a few times by shooting things, he kept his squirminess to himself in favour of accepting that Fandom couldn't afford not to do this stuff.

"Shut up," he mumbled. "Am not."

Are too.

"Just don't get all that do-gooding over the apartment, will you?" Atton said. "I've got a reputation to uphold."

Atton. Atton. Atton you were a Jedi.

Sparkle's mouth opened as though he was about to say exactly that. Then he thought better of it, because Atton, snorted, and shut his mouth again to grin.

"I'll keep all do-goodery outside of home," he promised. "At home, I'll probably smoke, drink, and watch terrible porn, just to get all of the 'actually a cinnamon roll' vibes out of my system."

"Maybe spit out a few curses here and there just to make sure," Atton said. "And no puppy-students hanging around the house."

Said the guy who'd let puppy-Sparkle hang around his house all the time.

"Nah, all my puppies stay in town. I know how you feel about pets," Sparkle replied, shrugging.

Even teacher's pets.

"I'm not really a dog person anyway."

Except when he literally became a person who was a dog.

"Kitten students, then," Atton said.

Beat.

"Okay, that doesn't actually work, because kittens are still evil on four legs."

"Yeah, but they smell better than dogs," Sparkle volunteered. "And they're scrappy like Fandom students usually are. It fits better."

Atton held his hands up. "They're all hairy, loud, smelly animals to me," he said, "The only thing they've got going for them is that they don't breed like gizka."

"Which are still adorable," Sparkle chimed in. "Can't gizka, like, get fixed? Please tell me you live in a galaxy that believes in spaying and neutering your damn pets, man."

Because Sparkle was irresponsible in many areas, but keeping pets was not generally one of them.

"Of course you can get them fixed," Atton sighed. "But you have to catch them first."

"... You can't buy them already fixed?" Sparkle wrinkled his nose. "Okay, okay, I won't start pestering you about getting a gizka. Even if they kinda look like Nerds candy with a tail."