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

[bigdamnprincipal]

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!]

Comments

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

"You think there's no ethics in survival?" Eliot asked. "No one's ever gonna know where their lines really are until they're actually in it." Lord knew, at these kids's ages, Eliot had certainly never thought he'd be capable of the things he'd grown up to do. Both for survival and just for a paycheck. "Doesn't mean it ain't worth thinking and talking about."

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

"I mean... I lived it," Sparkle pointed out. "I know personal limits and ethics are going to play a part. I just... I guess I still have to get my head around being the one to talk about that part to students. I was the little asshole standing in the back of Skywalker's class yelling at him because his in-class exercises about privilege were shitty and cruel."

Literally in the back. The very back. It had been that one where students stepped forward and backwards depending on the questions.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

"See, I'm pretty sure that means you're exactly the sort of person who should be talkin' to these kids about this kind of thing."

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

"Because I yelled at Skywalker?"

Because you cared about that sort of thing, Sparkle.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

"Because you didn't just go along with the exercise and not yell at Skywalker."

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

"Well, it's a shitty exercise," Sparkle muttered, shrugging and bunching up his shoulders a little. "He asks questions like 'did you have parents who told you you could be anything you wanted growing up,' and has you step forward or backwards depending on whether the answer is yes or no."

Sparkle was reasonably sure he was one of the first people on the island who had been able to reach out and touch the back wall of the classroom.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

". . . Did he ask if you had parents at all?"

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

"No," Sparkle replied, lip curling a little. "No, he did not ask that. But he asked if they graduated college and had a job."

Seriously. He'd been seven steps back and had wanted to punch the guy who had walked into the classroom telling his students to call him Master.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

Eliot was surprised all Sparkle had done was yell. "What was this supposed to prove?"

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

"Maybe that the teacher didn't check his fucking privilege before getting his students to check their fucking privilege," Sparkle muttered.

So... mostly he still hadn't figured that part out.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

"Nah, that's what it did prove," Eliot said, smiling faintly. "I was wonderin' what he thought it'd prove."

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

"Hell if I know," Sparkle said, shaking his head. "I remember it was one hell of a treat having people standing on or in front of the line telling me what they thought it was supposed to prove, though."

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

Eliot winced sympathetically. "Yeah, I can't imagine that was much fun at all. Still, not everyone would've spoken up."

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

"One of them decided it was so that the people in front of the line would know to not talk about shit people who were seven steps back might get jealous about. I almost fucking punched him."

... And then he'd dated him.

For some reason, that relationship hadn't worked out.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

"Hell, if I'da been a student in that class I might've."

If Eliot had been a student in that class -- as an actual teenager, of course -- he probably would have said something just as stupid. When he was growing up, no one even bothered to mention privilege, much less have a whole class exercise on it.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

Sparkle cracked the tiniest smile at that. Okay, he felt better, getting that off his chest.

"So... Ethics," he shared. "I guess I can touch on that, too. Maybe people will learn something about themselves. Hopefully I won't have to break up anybody throwing punches."

Hopefully nobody would end up wanting to punch him as badly as he'd wanted to punch Skywalker.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

"If you do, you can always give 'em detention."

The school hadn't hosted a detention in years.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

"... Shit, does the school even do detention anymore? I think the last time they had one of those was when a bunch of us tried to steal a camel."

Entirely because it seemed like it would be funny at the time.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

". . . Why was there a camel in your detention?"

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

"I mean, there was a fake camel in that detention? Alenko put us through an obstacle course we had to run like four times, and I think there was a fake camel in one of the mud pits."

It had been a while. A few years, anyway. Sparkle shrugged.

"He thought he was being funny, since Cade and I tried to steal a real camel during the spring trip that year."

If there was any justice in the world, Sparkle's students would all be as terrible as he was.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

Eliot shook his head. "Just when I think I've got a handle on the weirdness in this place."

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

"That's not even this place," Sparkle shared. "That's just Cade and I being drunk assholes in, like, Africa, on a school trip. More a dumbass teenager thing than a Fandom thing."

That they hadn't grown out of yet.

This was one of the reasons it was probably for the best that Cade wasn't often around the island.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

"Uh huh. Guess how many North American high schoolers go on school trips in Africa."

Life in Fandom offered a weird sort of privilege of its own.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[myownface]

"Heh, true, right?" Sparkle smirked and shook his head a little bit. "I'm still weirded out by that one. Like, in Toronto I didn't even get to go on some of the local field trips."

And pizza day was always disappointing.

Re: Meet Your Teachers [Spring 2017]

[vdistinctive]

"Most of my school's local field trips were to factory farms," Eliot said. "Or 4H clubs. I probably woulda tried to steal a camel, too."