fandomhigh | Intro to Fandom, Monday 11/28, First Period

Intro to Fandom, Monday 11/28, First Period

"Very shortly here," said Summer, getting class started with the usual straightforwardness that would no doubt dissolve entirely by the time they reached the conclusion, "we will be entering the month of December. In addition to being the last month of the calendar year here on Earth, it's also a rather concentrated collection of various holidays that people typically go pretty balls-to-the-wall about celebrating…..and so does the island."

"December is…a lot," Stark agreed. "A lot happens. Sometimes too much. But it usually isn't harmful. Usually." Sure, last year there had been a lot of excess deaths but they hadn't really stuck. "But it's still better not to be surprised about all the things that are coming. And there are so many things."

"Those of you already familiar with the winter holidays here on Earth," Summer continued, "are going to be at an advantage, because you have a better frame of reference and experience. For those of you who aren't...a lot of this stuff is going to seem pretty random and nonsensical and hard to predict. But, usually, during December, every day leading up to Christmas….which is December 25th….will be a different sort of take on some kind of holiday theme or trope. We're talking everything from eggnog in the pipes to polar bears flinging around Coke bottles, from marzipan rain showers to…" Insert obligatory sigh, "aggressive mistletoe."

Stark felt a sudden urge to look anywhere besides at his co-teacher, for some reason. "Yes, there's always mistletoe but it doesn't always bother everyone. Sometimes there are other animals, not just the bears with the sodas. And sometimes it snows sugar. And there have been fireplaces that just appeared, some years. And once the gremlins were singing at doors because sometimes people do that here, on Earth, I think."

"It's called caroling," Summer offered, helpfully, with a nod. "Basically, we're in for a wild month ahead of us, unless for some reason, the island decided to troll us all and have it be a totally normal December. There's no way we can properly prepare you for what exactly it's going to throw at us, but we can at least try. Every day is likely to be something different, something new, and something strange…sort of like the week leading up to Halloween, only it's a lot longer and the theme is different."

“Usually it’s nothing harmful. Except the time the reindeer tried to eat me but that shouldn’t happen again. There was a satellite,” Stark said, very helpfully. “Usually nothing attacks except the mistletoe which isn’t trying to hurt you.” Except maybe emotionally?

"It'll just put you in awkward situations where your only recourse is to kiss a squirrel," said Summer, sending a slight glare toward whether she suspected Leroy definitely was, before sighing and turning to the board, and starting to put some of the things they discussed onto it. Also, helpfully, she drew a few pictures for those who wouldn't know mistletoe or a snowman if they came right up and bit them on the ass….which was entirely possible.

"So now's your chance," she further explained, "to try and prep yourself for what may come, especially if you're not already familiar with this planet and its December holidays, but I will say one thing about the holidays here: at least Fandom's never made me have to deal with a giant homeless exploding Santa Claus in the sky."

Stark gave her an odd look for that but opted just to nod rather than question it. For now.

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"I'm sending out a mass text later," said Summer, toward the end of class, once all the threats of December had been presumably catalogued and prepped for, "but I thought I'd mention it so you can feel all special being one of the first to know and getting an invite in person, buuuuut....Christmas rager is officially this Friday, and you're totally going to be there, riiiiiiiight, Stark?"

Stark did feel all special for that!

"Already? I don't know if I have a sweater for this year."

That translated to 'of course I'll come.'

"Well, then," said Summer, simply and to the point, "you should get one. Or get glittered. You know the rules."

"I might need to consult my stylist," Stark told her. "So I can try to avoid some of the glitter."

"Some of the glitter," Summer agreed with a nod. "Not all. It's impossible to avoid all the glitter."

She then turned a squinting, thoughtful, critical eye on Stark as she shifted brain gears to consider him in a more ugly-Christmas-sweater-specific light.

"Your stylist," she noted, "will see what she can do."

"I would appreciate that," Stark said, nodding seriously. "If she isn't too busy with party planning."

"How was your holiday?"

"Uggghhhh!"

And here she was, having a nice time trying to plan out potential party outfits for Stark when he had to drop a question like that.

"Well," she said, throwing up her hands, "my grampa showed up right when I was in the middle of making my jello shots on Wednesday to drag me home because he wanted help with turning himself into a turkey so he could scam the president into pardoning all his war crimes, which of course didn't work, so, instead, I spent the weekend in lockdown at home with my family, none of which would happen if my grampa and the president just got over themselves and banged already!"

WELL, HE ASKED, DIDN'T HE?

She finished with a huff and a petulant crossing of her arms before asking back, "How was yours?"

Stark just stared for a moment. He had asked. He'd brought this on himself. "Oh. I wondered where you were Wednesday. Mine was...I went to Seattle. With Travis."

As if there were anyone else he would have gone to Seattle with.

"...oh, hey," Summer blinked a little with a realization, "then we weren't too far away from each other, actually. I mean, except for the whole clearly different dimensions thing."

So maybe there was actually someone, coincidentally, who he might have gone to Seattle with.

(Well. To the suburbs, anyway).

"....unless the president in Travis' version of it also turned into a turkey and turned a bunch of marines into giant muscular turkeys to fight ancient aliens that looked suspiciously like Pilgrims and Native Americans..."

But she doubted it! Besides, there was something way more interesting here than all that.

"How did that go, anyway?" she asked, eager and thrilled by this revelation. "Did you have a good time? Did you get to meet his ~faaamily~?"

"I didn't hear about anyone turning into turkeys," Stark said, blinking a few times as he tried to process what Summer was saying.

"It was... fine. The turkey caught fire. And his parents were there and I wasn't supposed to meet them, just his friends at the fire station but they ended up at the dinner and there was fighting. Travis was fighting with his father. About lying and... we might have been better off with people turning into turkeys."

"Oof," said Summer, with emphasis, and a deeply sympathetic look that turned a little hopeful. "But, hey, look on the bright side! That right there sounds pretty typical for one of these big family-oriented holidays, so you got a good, authentic experience! And if the turkey's going to catch on fire, at least it's with a firefighter around, right?"

She tilted her head a little.

"Were you glad you went?" she then asked, because that was the important part.

Edited 2022-11-28 21:56 (UTC)

"I...I don't regret going?" Stark said, trying to choose his words carefully. "But...a lot of it was uncomfortable. Not all of it." It was complicated!

"I liked his mother. And his friends."

Not his father.

"I swear," said Summer, taking note of the careful wording of the answer and the unsurprising omission of Travis' father, considering that that was where the fighting had stemmed from, it sounded like, "it's not a real family holiday without it getting uncomfortable."

She meant that to be reassuring.

"Especially that first one. I'm not saying they get better the more of them you experience, but they do tend to at least go....smoother, when you have a better idea what to expect. I mean, hell, the first time Barry met my parents, my grampa abandoned me on a planetoid in the middle of bum-fuck space where I practically had to become a god-empress and invent space travel for them to try to get back!"

"I'm not used to families. I never remember having one." Everyone on Moya counted as family. He knew that most of the time.

He wasn't sure this was a first holiday. It might be an only holiday. Who could say?

"There was no space travel. And they don't know where I'm from." Or that he wasn't human. "Although I'm not sure that would have really made it worse." Maybe it would have been a distraction.

"Your grandfather abandoned you?"

Summer gave Stark a look that suggested he really shouldn't be so surprised and rolled her eyes a little.

"Yeah," she said. "When we needed to be back because Barry was coming over for dinner for the first time. I mean, like, okay, whatever, I know you guys had your brains totally taken over by face-hugging parasites and you acted like total douche-nozzles getting out of that place, but how could you just forget that I had been with you, you assholes? I was the whole reason those face-huggers didn't immediately just make them shit eggs and die."

She gave a slight grunt of annoyance for that particular old wound being opened again, before adding, more conversationally and more to the important side of the conversation, "And he...Travis," she added, super helpfully, to keep the different narrative threads neatly in order, "definitely seems like he comes from a super normal place, so, yeah, easing into the whole alien thing is probably a smart idea. How did you explain the mask, though? Did you just tell them that it--"

She realized she was going to say that it was super gross under there, but then also realized how much of an echo of something someone much smaller had said, and stopped herself.

"Er...that it was, uh...like, some kind of medical thing, maybe?"

"I'm sorry," Stark said. "They shouldn't have left you. I- I know that hurts."

He reached up to touch the edge of his mask by his chin. "I think maybe Travis's friend that was here might have warned them, about the mask? His father asked." Because he was a jerk. "I just said I had a condition and it was best to keep it covered."

Nobody had called him gross though!

That was good! What kind of person would do that, anyway, running around calling him gross?

Summer almost let out a grumbling complain about being used to it, but she knew who she was talking to, so she didn't. She just sighed a little, then nodded. "That's good, then," she said. "That they kind of knew what to expect and were...it sounds like they were, anyway...understanding. Or at least polite about it."

Weirdly, one of his favorite people had called him gross not all that long ago.

"I'm not sure he would have gotten a chance to be rude if he'd really tried," Stark said. "Not about the mask, at least. But I...I didn't really know what to expect. From any of them."

Definitely not from the parents. And Stark really, really hadn't expected everything that happened with them.

"The turkey catching fire was a distraction at least. They used the, uh, jaws on life on the oven."

Summer was just going to take a few moments to just try and picture that.

"....amazing," she concluded.

Look, maybe it was just nice, every once in a while, to hear that someone else's holidays involved things that required terms like Jaws of Life in some capacity, too, okay?

True, hers also often including terms like 'giant exploding Santas' and 'the president got turned into a turkey', but she took the victories where she could.

Of course Summer thought it was amazing. Stark should have expected that.

"The sprinklers went off. And they needed a fire extinguisher. And they need a new oven."

Stark, that was obvious when you mentioned the jaws of life. "But one of the other firefighters brought in dinner. At least we could eat."

"Yeah," said Summer, "that's good. There's nothing worse than Thanksgiving without anything to actually eat."

Not even discovering a bunch of aliens hibernating underneath the Washington Monument.

"Vic told them I like cupcakes so there were some for dessert. From one of the other firefighters. There would have still been those, at least? But someone from another station had sent over another full dinner."

It had, indeed, been a Thanksgiving miracle. Really the only thing that had gone right that day.

"It would have been much worse if there hadn't been food. More fighting, I'm sure."

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