fandomhigh | Culture Shock; Thursday, Period 2 [01//10].

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culture shock

Culture Shock; Thursday, Period 2 [01//10].

Once again, class was in the Danger Shop. And once again, they would be greeted by Kanan and Summer, along with one extra special guest for the day; a medium-sized dog, all happiness and rainbow spots, who was just barely managing to keep his butt planted on the floor, looking up at Kanan and hoping - hoping! - that he'd be given the go-ahead to visit each and every new person coming into the room.

Kanan was a big ol' meanie and was absolutely making Stance stay put for the time being.

"Hey again, guys," he greeted, nodding at the students gathered. "This week, we'd like to talk a little bit about positive and negative early impressions of a new place."

With handy visual guides and/or trauma, naturally.

It just sort of went without saying. Summer, meanwhile, had to shake herself back into attention once she realized that Kanan had gone and gotten class started, but, to be fair, Stance was always very distracting and he was being just so good...so good! She was going to spoil him stupid with pets and snacks when this was over! Oh, yes she was! She was! Oh, yes, she--

--right, class. "Right!" Class now, most adorable dog in the multiverse later. Summer hit the class with a bright smile. "And just as we found out last week that there's a wide variety of new places out there, there can be a wide range of reactions to those places, as well. We all come from different places, we all react to things differently, and that's okay. It's what you do with those reactions that'll end up mattering.

"So, today," she continued, "we're going to experience two...very different things, both of them something pluck straight from the good ol' classic, actual-things-that-happened-here Fandom Island playbook! A nice little burst of some homespun culture shock in handy bite-sized pieces. And then we'll sort of, you know, talk about how you reacted, how your classmates reacted, any other thoughts, things like that.

"So, without further ado, I'll pass it over to Kanan. I actually wasn't here for this first one; it was before my time, unfortunately, so this is going to be an experience for me, too." One she was clearly perhaps a bit too excited for, shut up. "You guys ready? Kanan?"

….still a little weird to call him that, TBH.

[[and the OCD is....Up! Have at it, my friends!]]

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With a reaction!

Sabine Wren

Keyleth

Lana Beniko

Eh, it's short. They'll get into the fun stuff in a minute.

"Ready, and we'll start with one of Fandom's more benign happenings; that time the island parked itself next to a world where everything was... bright," Kanan said, smiling crookedly. "And I mean bright. Kittens and rainbow unicorns and I'm pretty sure everything there lived on a diet of ice cream and hamburgers. Weird place. Happy place. I spent a day being followed around by puppies and penguins in little hats."

As he spoke about it, naturally the Danger Shop was painting that picture, until the area they were standing in looked a little bit like the sort of technicolor scene that belonged on a thirteen year-old's trapper keeper.

(Summer was totally that thirteen year old girl. And she still had that trapper keeper).

Sadly, sunglasses were not provided. Kanan was squinting a little bit. The dog at his side was looking around all bright-eyed, tongue lolling out of his face and tail wagging away excitedly.

"One stuck around."

Go on, kids. Feel free to explore the ~~Lisa Frank nightmare~~ bright happy place that Kanan's dog once called home. Or come meet Stance. He wants to be your friend. He wants to be everyone's friend.

There wasn't a lot of maturity to the look of this place, but look at all the color. And who was going to care about maturity anyway when there were rainbow unicorns around?

She was still trying to get Stance to come over, though. He was on theme.

Well, everything was a little bit bright here, wasn’t it? Even for Keyleth.

Which did not stop her from clapping her hands over her mouth to muffle a delighted little squeal at the rainbow unicorns.

Well, this was definitely...bright.

Maaaybe Lana would just try to play with Stance instead.

Honestly, she'd seen lightsaber duels less shiny.

"Now," said Summer, once she was able to pry herself away from the neon-sparkle throw-up that was almost lit.ter.ral.lee the same world a brain-eating slug had conjectured in her mind to sway her not to kill it, "we're going to go a bit in the other direction."

Goodbye, magical world of adorable critters and rainbow horses! Hello,....second floor common room?

"This should be a bit familiar to you guys, right? Sorry it's the second floor; that's where I lived in the dorms when I went to school here, so it's the one I'm most familiar with."

Because they were just soooo different.

"Anyway, make yourself comfortable, go about your day like you normally would, maybe grab a snack. There's probably a million pounds of pizza in the fridge. And what you're about to experience didn't exactly happen this way, it happened in my own room, but I figured this was a bit more...accessible. Anyway, go on, do your thing."

Nothing was going to happen until they did. And when they diiiid...

...hey, guys, enjoy the giant shark crashing through the wall into the common room and just sort of flopping and thrashing around!

...yeah, she was never getting over that damn shark.

Apparently, neither was Stance, who was going to just hide behind Kanan and bark. A lot. From the look of it, he remembered these guys, too.

“Oh, wow,” Keyleth said, her voice a bit muffled by the fact that her head was halfway inside the fridge, “that’s a lot of boxes of food.”

Did the fridge just make them or something?

And then the shark came crashing in, and —

“You’re not supposed to be here!”

That was not so much an expression of aggression as it was one of genuine distress because how was it supposed to breathe?

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Sabine said, facepalming a bit.

Surely it wouldn't attack anyone because it was a shark on land and that would be r- She should make sure it didn't attack anyone.

Lana spun away from the pizza as the shark crashed through the wall, lightning already gathering around her hands, though the look on her face was more disbelief than anger.

"What in the galaxy -?"

Once everything with the shark settled down, the Danger Shop reverted into a nice, neutral, hopefully culture-shock free classroom. "So," Summer offered, "two very different situations, probably a lot of different reactions. And now that we can clear our impulses and look back on it a little, we can talk about it."

"Did you find one situation more jarring than the other," Kanan added, "or were they both pretty shocking in their own way? Did you have a more positive reaction to one than the other? What were your first impulses with each?"

Summer grinned faintly as she added her one additional question, "Anything about your reaction you'd change, if you could?"

"I probably would've grabbed something more useful for dealing with the shark than a lamp if it came through my living room window again," Kanan noted, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Lessons learned."

It had been a very eventful storm for both of your teachers, class. Feel fortunate you missed it.

"They were both...interesting," Lana offered.

"Interesting how?" Summer prompted for more information in a way that was way too teacherly, if she was honest, but that was her job, right?

"Well, the first one was very...bright," Lana said. "The other one made me want to shove that thing back out the hole it made. When did that happen? Is it a usual thing?"

"Shoving that thing back out the hole it made was exactly what me and my roommate did at the time," Summer said with a wry snort of a laugh. "And this was...." She narrowed her eyes, thinking back, then those eyes popped wide open when she remembered. "Oh, God, right around when I first got here, my first summer. Not last summer, but the one before that. And, luckily, no sharks since. I mean, unless you count Sidon, but he's not a shark, not really. And he's not crashing through anyone's walls, either.

"That I know of."

Little did she know, later that day...

Lana grinned. "Sidon is entirely himself." Whatever else he was, there was no doubt of that.

When they tag in!

Summer was there for the talking to if needed! She was mostly just still wondering if anyone who wound up in 204 after her would be able to tell that a giant shark had crashed through the wall, and she definitely had to make it up to Stance that this giant shark, however fake, had upset him so much. No one wanted an upset Stance.

N O O N E.

Kanan was also here for the talking, naturally, though he was content to let other people give his dog all the comfort they wanted to.

... While making plans to take Stance for an extra long run and to maybe give him extra treats after class for that shark shock, there.

My cat tried very valiantly to interrupt this post, but I was able to fend him off, you guys.

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Culture Shock; Thursday, Period 2 [01//10].

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