fandomhigh | Home Ec, Tuesday, Period 1

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home ec

Home Ec, Tuesday, Period 1

Someone had decorated the classroom. Possibly several someones.

Who were color blind.

"Yeah, I don't know," Eliot told the students when they arrived. "Just . . . try to make the best of it." He was sort of desperately wishing he had a belt sander handy to strip the orange off things, at least, but they had other things to do right now. And he wasn't teaching Shop this semester.

"Right. So today we're going to touch on the 'economics' side of class. I got the syllabus for this sucker straight from the school board and they, uh. Well. Let's just say I'm pretty sure this thing hasn't been updated since the '80s." He pulled a very distinctively shaped box out of the teacher's desk, popped it open, and started passing around checkbooks. "I'm guessin' most -- if not all -- of you guys have never actually seen one of these before. These are called checks. They were used as sort of formalized financial markers throughout the US and a lot of the rest of the Earth in the 20th century. They've been made almost completely obsolete thanks to smartphones, credit cards, and the internet, but -- sure. Let's all learn how to write checks."

He was rolling his eyes so hard, you guys. This was absurd.

Once everyone had their checkbooks, he went to the whiteboard and drew a rough diagram of the check on the board, numbering each blank and explaining what went in each one. "These suckers are really easy to counterfeit or use in fraud, by the way," he warned them. "If you put 'cash' in the 'who is this for' spot, anyone can use it to get paper money or coins out of your bank account. If you write a check and your account doesn't have enough funds in it to cover the expense, it'll 'bounce', meanin' the person you're payin' doesn't get their money and gets pissed, and the bank gets pissed, and when people get pissed about money it usually means at the very least they're gonna charge you a lot more for it."

At the most? Well. Eliot had maybe been sent out to 'retrieve' in retaliation for a bounced check or two in his time. It wasn't pretty.

"So the basic idea for this class is: You each get the same amount of imaginary money in your imaginary bank account, about 10 thousand -- they ain't dollars, but whatever -- which you'll spend using your super unofficial checks. Then when we're doin' lessons throughout the rest of the semester, you're gonna 'pay' for your supplies using that imaginary money. I dunno, if you want to use, like, organic flour when we're makin' bread, that'll cost more -- whatever the hell you wanna call 'em, points, simoleons, Fandom-bucks, whatever -- than just the regular old all-purpose flour. Maybe you really wanna use the fancy flour, but then next week we're gonna do sewing and you want to get the fancy fabric, too. You're gonna have to keep an eye on your own 'account' and decide what you'd rather spend more money on. Ya follow?"

This was far too complicated for a Fandom class. Seriously.

"If you run out of money b'fore the end of the semester I'm probably supposed to start teachin' you about credit or something and you can learn an important lesson about how to apply for a loan and slowly ruin your life, but -- fuck it. Just -- I ain't gonna track whether or not your checks are bouncin' or not." He was not going to track whether or not they actually used their checks or not, let's be real. "Bullshit a breakdown of what you spent where at the end of the semester and if it even kinda makes sense I'll give you a pass on the economics side of things."

This is what happened when budgeting was being taught by a professional thief.

"For today, practice writin' and endorsin' checks. Go nuts and pay your friends a billion fan-bucks each. Write somethin' dirty on the 'For' line. Practice signing your roommate's name. Y'all're probably either gonna pay for things with PayPal or gold bullion around here, anyway. If your world uses somethin' real interesting for currency, like -- actual shells or something, or -- hey -- if you use an actual barter system, come on over and tell me about it. Money in my world's basically a giant con, so it'll be nice to hear about something that might actually work."

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You've got 10,000 imaginary dollars! And you've got 10,000 imaginary dollars!

Well, good. This was something she needed to learn, that hadn't been an option before Fandom. Even if she'd never seen a check in her life, Hanna could see how easy these would be to keep track of.

Peridot had a vague understanding of how currency worked already. The idea that she might be able to access her money simply by writing down an amount and letting somebody else do all the work was fascinating.

Girl really needed a debit card.

Alluka couldn't really think of a time when she'd need to write these things, outside of this class, but that didn't mean she wasn't interested.

Besides, imaginary money sounded like a lot of fun.

Finally something that wasn't on a computer. This seemed a lot more reliable, not to mention understandable, at least if you were from Lucille's time.

Ada was doing a damn good job at keeping a straight (and totally innocent) face at Eliot's reaction to how her other class had decorated the Home Ec room, even as she agreed with his assessment. She sat down at her be-glittered desk, so that no one else would have to use it.

Even if it was one of the more subtle works of art in the room.

If she muttered something under her breath about money in any world is a goddamn con, well, it was true!

"Ah, so like a letter of credit," Hyacinthe murmured, chuckling. "Like the merchants from La Serenissima use, when neither haggling nor poison has worked."

"Poison?" Hanna couldn't help that reaction. In part because she would use a gun if she had to. And not over buying something.

"The merchants of La Serenissima are known for three things, jolie," he explained. "Their glassware, their ability to haggle, and their virulent poisons. 'Tis a joke that they will always get the best price for the first, if not by the second then by the third."

"I think that sounds like somewhere I should not visit without a great deal of money," Hanna observed, then added, "or weapons. Is that-- legal?" She frowned a little. "No offense intended. But I have not been to many other worlds."

And Pinkie's world was not what you'd call typical.

"Traveling with weapons?" Hyacinthe shook his head, though in confusion, not negation. "This would be the first time I went without a knife since I learned to hold one, were I worried about such things as rules."

He wasn't. He was worried about getting attacked by a completely random creature that hadn't been on the island the day before, however.

"I meant the poisoning. But it is good to know that weapons would not be a problem. I don't know anything about poisons. Except for what to avoid eating in the forest."

And that she was fairly resistant to some, but that wasn't something to be counting on, after all.

She should have taken a class with Karla!

"'Tis a joke," he assured her. "If for no other reason than because a good poison is very expensive and so they would need to be making enough to justify the use. And, believe me, jolie, I know plenty of La Serenissiman merchants who were terrible at haggling and yet I still walk the earth."

"Oh, of course. I apologize. English isn't my first language either," Hanna added. "Neither is French?" She smiled. "//But I know what jolie means,//" she added in that language.

"My milk tongue is Tsingani, the language my mother spoke to me in the cradle," Hyacinthe said, a little excited. No one else seemed to know any of the lannguages he spoke apart from Cruith--English. "What was yours?"

He winked at her. "Good," he added, with a dimple. "I should hate to think you were unaware of how pretty you are."

Hanna turned pink, but managed not to duck her head. "German. Ich bin Deutscher von Geburt," she said explanatorily, then translated. "By birth, that is what I am, but I have only visited Germany. We never lived there." She managed a small cough. "So you speak English, and Cruith, and Tsingani? What does that sound like?" She paused a moment, and then added, "Thank you for saying I am pretty. It is nice to hear."

"Skaldic!" Hyacinthe said, excitedly pointing. "That 'twas Skaldic! I speak only a smattering--" and most of what he did speak was rude or dirty or both "--but I recognize it!"

"How funny!" Hanna laughed, then asked, "Is there a land called Skaldia where you are from? Skald is a word for a storyteller, in an old, old language." Her father had taught her that; her face sobered a moment, then she smiled again. "So maybe there are more languages that are the same, but have different names from your world to mine?"

"Yes, 'tis Terre D'Ange's closest neighbor," Hyacinthe explained, grinning hugely. "'Tis a land of snow and deep forests, blood and iron. There are raids and skirmishes across the border every summer."

Hyacinthe, down in the protected center of the country and no more than a babe when the Battle of Three Princes had been fought, knew the fighting only as exciting tales and the glory of the Heroes of Camlach.

"D'Angeline is the language you called French, and Cruithne is what you know of as English. Alba is the island across the Strait; they sent their prince as an envoy not long ago. He had a club foot and was painted blue, with huge whorls of tattoos, or so I hear."

"That sounds like what Germany was, a hundred or more years ago. Or, perhaps a generation or two ago." Hanna couldn't help smiling back at Hyacinthe's enthusiasm. "They have not been at war for some time, though. They lost the last two wars, badly... Alba?" She bit her lip. "We have an island called that, in the Mediterranean Sea. Terre D'Ange," she repeated. "I only saw a little of our France, two years ago, when I was going from Morocco to Germany. Deustchland," she added.

Hyacinthe pulled out a notebook and started sketching Europa, labeling the provinces of Terre D'Ange and then the rest of the countries. "See, Skaldia," he said, pointing to the country just east of the province of Camlach. "And Alba. And La Serenissima." He pointed to the a small spot on the boot-shaped Caerdicca Unitas.

"Italia. Italy," Hanna said, pointing to the same area. "I think that is near the city of Venice, that tiny spot there." She pointed south of Terre D'Ange, and said, "Aragon is part of Spain, here. Espana. I went dancing there, with a friend. Wonderful music."

Looking at the rest of the map, she said, "Oh, England, Alba! I see." Further south, in what he'd labeled Menekhet, she said, "Morocco. And Egypt. I have been there..." Far, far north of the Flatlands on the map, she put in a hanging peninsula, and labeled it: Norway, Sweden, and across a narrow bay, Finland. "Where I grew up, here." Almost at the top of the world. "Very cold, always."

"Might even be the same city," Hyacinthe said, eyes sparkling. "Depending on how old your Venice is. You've truly traveled to all of these places? That's amazing!" He grinned at her, boyishly handsome. "Until I came here, I'd never left the City of Elua!"

"I'm not certain. Several hundred years, I know that." She beamed at him. "I can look it up to find out, or if it had a name like Serenissima... Elua? Is it a big city?" Hanna asked, biting her lip. "Mostly I saw all those places on one trip." She traced a line from Morocco to Spain, through the southern part of France, up to what would be Germany. "Caravan. Then boat. Then a train. To meet up with my father in Berlin."

It was fun talking about all this with Hyacinthe; Hanna was too shy to properly flirt, most of the time. She rather admired how easy it made it look.

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