Brooke Davis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gobrookeyourself) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2018-09-03 08:26 am
gobrookeyourself) wrote in fandomhigh2018-09-03 08:26 am
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Badass Women You Need To Know- Monday- 2nd period
Today the class was in the Danger Shop, because Brooke was pretty sure she knew how to program it without it glitching now. The students would find themselves on the sides of a closed-off street filled with dressed-up people and a lot of little British flags.
"If you've been around here for any decent amount of time, you've probably heard about the royals. We don't have kings or queens in this country anymore, but for some reason we still fawn over them and want to know who's getting married and get pictures of tiny little princes and princesses." Brooke herself was guilty of this a little, but look, they had great clothes. "The last guy did marry a black American woman though, so I figure we get a little reprieve on getting called out for it for at least a little while. And before all the current stuff came William and Harry's mom, Princess Diana, who we're going to learn about today.
"Diana Spencer was born into British nobility, and in 1981 she married Charles, Prince of Wales, on July 29. That would be today, and you're technically at their wedding. Or, watching them go to their wedding," Brooke went on. "The wedding was televised and became an event, and she became a tabloid darling. Charles and Diana had two boys, and the marriage was a mess. Everybody cheated on everybody, it was a disaster, he was terrible, she admitted that she wasn't coping well with the pressures of being royalty, and in 1996 the couple divorced." She looked around. "See, one reason we're in the Danger Shop is because I'm pretty sure if we used Portalocity I'd have just ruined some people's entire weeks.
"We're not going to talk about the tabloid stuff. If you want to read more into it, there's plenty out there. What we're going to focus on was that Diana was very much her own woman. When it came to her kids, she called the shots, even when the Royal Family might have expected her to defer to them. In a televised interview she publicly admitted to suffering from bulimia and mental health issues like depression, which is still a big thing for people to admit to. She was also involved in a crazy amount of charity work, becoming a patron of a whole lot of stuff, largely focusing on children and combatting disease. She was expected to make public appearances and visit places and she just ran with it. So much so that I have notes," Brooke said, actually pulling out an index card to read off of. "There was the Great Ormond Street Hospital, Natural History Museum, Red Cross, Barnardo's, Headway, Chester Childbirth Appeal, Child Bereavement UK, Landmind Survivors Network, Help the Aged, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, National Children's Orchestra, Menengitis rust, the British Deaf Association, the Guinness Trust, British Lung Foundation, Malcolm Sargeant Cancer Fund for Children... There's a whole lot more on here. After the divorce she resigned from over a hundred charities to focus on six. She's probably best known for her work with HALO, which located landmines left behind after wars, and her work was credited with helping lead to the Ottawa Treaty, which international ban on the use of anti-personnel landmines. She was also largely involved in HIV and AIDS charities, which, back in the 80s when it was a new thing, people panicked. It wasn't well-known how it was spread yet, homophobia was all the rage, and Diana would publicly hug or hold hands with AIDS patients, trying to destigmatize the disease. She did fundraising, she opened hospital wards in the UK and homes for young AIDS patients in the States, her portrait was chosen to hang in the Gay Icons exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, and even in 2017 she won an award from Attitude magazine for her work, which Harry accepted for her.
"And he did that because in 1997, Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris, along with her boyfriend and the driver of the car. Some people say it was because they were being chased through a tunnel by paparazzi, some say it was because the driver was under the influence, I say neither of those situations helped the other. Her funeral was televised, representatives from some of her charities even walked in the procession, and Elton John-" Sorry to anyone in Deadpool and Vanessa's class, you were going to think Elton John was a much bigger thing these days than he is. "-rewrote one of his songs for her, with the proceeds of the single also going to her charities. And with all the current royal stuff now, her memory's still very much around.
"So, uhh. Now that I gave you all the depressing stuff, let's watch them get married, I guess?" Maybe she had timed this wrong.
"If you've been around here for any decent amount of time, you've probably heard about the royals. We don't have kings or queens in this country anymore, but for some reason we still fawn over them and want to know who's getting married and get pictures of tiny little princes and princesses." Brooke herself was guilty of this a little, but look, they had great clothes. "The last guy did marry a black American woman though, so I figure we get a little reprieve on getting called out for it for at least a little while. And before all the current stuff came William and Harry's mom, Princess Diana, who we're going to learn about today.
"Diana Spencer was born into British nobility, and in 1981 she married Charles, Prince of Wales, on July 29. That would be today, and you're technically at their wedding. Or, watching them go to their wedding," Brooke went on. "The wedding was televised and became an event, and she became a tabloid darling. Charles and Diana had two boys, and the marriage was a mess. Everybody cheated on everybody, it was a disaster, he was terrible, she admitted that she wasn't coping well with the pressures of being royalty, and in 1996 the couple divorced." She looked around. "See, one reason we're in the Danger Shop is because I'm pretty sure if we used Portalocity I'd have just ruined some people's entire weeks.
"We're not going to talk about the tabloid stuff. If you want to read more into it, there's plenty out there. What we're going to focus on was that Diana was very much her own woman. When it came to her kids, she called the shots, even when the Royal Family might have expected her to defer to them. In a televised interview she publicly admitted to suffering from bulimia and mental health issues like depression, which is still a big thing for people to admit to. She was also involved in a crazy amount of charity work, becoming a patron of a whole lot of stuff, largely focusing on children and combatting disease. She was expected to make public appearances and visit places and she just ran with it. So much so that I have notes," Brooke said, actually pulling out an index card to read off of. "There was the Great Ormond Street Hospital, Natural History Museum, Red Cross, Barnardo's, Headway, Chester Childbirth Appeal, Child Bereavement UK, Landmind Survivors Network, Help the Aged, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, National Children's Orchestra, Menengitis rust, the British Deaf Association, the Guinness Trust, British Lung Foundation, Malcolm Sargeant Cancer Fund for Children... There's a whole lot more on here. After the divorce she resigned from over a hundred charities to focus on six. She's probably best known for her work with HALO, which located landmines left behind after wars, and her work was credited with helping lead to the Ottawa Treaty, which international ban on the use of anti-personnel landmines. She was also largely involved in HIV and AIDS charities, which, back in the 80s when it was a new thing, people panicked. It wasn't well-known how it was spread yet, homophobia was all the rage, and Diana would publicly hug or hold hands with AIDS patients, trying to destigmatize the disease. She did fundraising, she opened hospital wards in the UK and homes for young AIDS patients in the States, her portrait was chosen to hang in the Gay Icons exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, and even in 2017 she won an award from Attitude magazine for her work, which Harry accepted for her.
"And he did that because in 1997, Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris, along with her boyfriend and the driver of the car. Some people say it was because they were being chased through a tunnel by paparazzi, some say it was because the driver was under the influence, I say neither of those situations helped the other. Her funeral was televised, representatives from some of her charities even walked in the procession, and Elton John-" Sorry to anyone in Deadpool and Vanessa's class, you were going to think Elton John was a much bigger thing these days than he is. "-rewrote one of his songs for her, with the proceeds of the single also going to her charities. And with all the current royal stuff now, her memory's still very much around.
"So, uhh. Now that I gave you all the depressing stuff, let's watch them get married, I guess?" Maybe she had timed this wrong.
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Listen to the lecture
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"AIDS is a mostly sexually transmitted disease that is a way bigger discussion, bulimia is an eating disorder, gay icons are... icons for gay people, and paparazzi are gross people who chase celebrities down for pictures."
And then she added, "And landmines blow up when you step on them. So like, it's been years after a war, you're going about your day walking to the store, and bam. It's like that."
Was that helpful? Brooke hoped.
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"Ah, so not banning them during wars, but after?" That made...a bit more sense, she supposed, as long as you weren't occupying a place. "You wouldn't want to blow yourself up once your enemies were gone." Surely just marking where they were would make more sense?
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She had no idea, had not done that much research into it.
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"I understand the concept of marriage is complicated on this planet, and differs from place to place and in different times. What does it involve here? Why was their marriage unsuccessful?"
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Watch the procession
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Re: Watch the procession
Brooke guessed, but she didn't think she guessed wrong.
Talk to Brooke
OOC