fandomhigh | Sleeping With Your Eyes Open, January 10, 2018, 3rd period

Entry tags:

practical diplomacy

Sleeping With Your Eyes Open, January 10, 2018, 3rd period

"Right," Anakin said, slapping a huge briefing paper on each student's desk as they arrived. "Another key problem in diplomacy is trying to keep up with all of the studies and briefings and fights via email about your area of expertise. Here's a hint: you never will. So you will need to learn to skim quickly and be able to talk with authority with very little actual knowledge."

Somewhere Obi-Wan was despairing of Anakin's technique.

"To that end, you have ten minutes to read the tome in front of you and then brief the class on this, your new area of expertise." He smiled. "And pray that no one in the room has more actual expertise than you do."

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"How mighty is it?" Anakin asked. "Is it more than 3 meters in height?"

"Naaah, they're tiny," Norman replied, easily. "Only about the size of a grapefruit. Their strength lies in numbers. They're a very social animal."

With not much in the way of actual might.

"So they run in herds?" Anakin asked.

"They do, actually," Norman confirmed, breaking into a little grin. The idea that a group of something so tiny could be called a 'herd' had amused him greatly when he'd read it. He would have thought there would be some cute funny name for it, like a 'giggle,' or a 'snuggle.'

A snuggle of chinchillas. It would've been great.

"Herds, high up in the mountains of South America."

"And are they very ferocious?"

Yes, Anakin, fear the ravaging herds of chinchillas, coming to a Fandom invasion near you.

But what better to break in a new flock of students than packs of murderous chinchillas?

"Only if you're afraid of very soft things peeing defensively at you," Norman replied. "They're actually kind of neurotic, they don't adjust well to change."

"...defensive peeing?" Anakin repeated.

"I'm pretty sure most things would pee a little if someone tried to turn them into a coat," Norman pointed out.

"They get turned into coats?" Anakin asked. "How many of them would it take?"

"That," Norman said, with all the air of a guy who hadn't the foggiest clue, "depends entirely on the style of coat. But it's safe to say that if you were to make any one coat entirely out of grapefruit peels, you'd be using the same amount of chinchillas as grapefruits."

He'd latched onto grapefruit once. He was going to roll with it.

"Do you see a lot of grapefruit-peel coats where you're from?" Anakin asked dryly.

"For some of the people where I'm from, it would be an improvement," Norman replied, just as dryly. "You should have met my uncle before he died."

Mr. Prenderghast had been... an individual. The smell of grapefruit would definitely have been a step up.

"Interesting sense of style?" Anakin asked.

"Crazy hermit who had a phobia of spicy hummus," Norman supplied.

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Sleeping With Your Eyes Open, January 10, 2018, 3rd period

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