fandomhigh | Dealing With Other People's Trauma, Tuesday 9/2, 3rd period

Dealing With Other People's Trauma, Tuesday 9/2, 3rd period

Stark was standing at the front of the room looking serious. Serious except for the rather absurd hat that he’d woken up wearing and had been unable to rid himself of thus far.

“Welcome,” he said once everyone had arrived. “I know some of you. Not all. I’m Stark. Just Stark, though some people decided to call me James.” It was easier just to go along with that, honestly.

“I don’t usually wear this hat. It just…appeared this morning. The island does things like this, sometimes. You’ll get used to this eventually if you haven’t already done so.” Probably, anyway.

“So. We’ll do introductions in a moment. Always good to start with those especially when there are new people on the island.” He nodded to the new faces.

“But first, a small introduction to what we'll be doing here. Or what I hope we'll be doing here, in this class. The idea of it,” he said, looking around, “is to recognize that we've all had different experiences. Not all of them positive. And that can cause problems.”

Oh, the understatement of it all.

“So we're going to try to not make things worse for other people. We'll try to be kind, when we can. We'll try to learn how to be gentle with others when they need it in certain situations and at certain times.”

Stark paused then and looked around. “I don't know anyone who hasn't been hurt, hasn't been traumatized in some way. It's good to remember that. Now, having said that…i suppose the rest of you ought to introduce yourselves?”

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"That's her house?" Erasmus asked, startled. "I mean--I went for a walk on Sunday and I saw it." He did not mention why he'd been out there. He didn't want to seem creepy. "That's...nice." It might also explain a lot about why she got to have this nice life with a house and a job and a fiance, if she had even less ability to sense the dead than Erasmus and the graveyard that was obviously around there somewhere didn't bother her.

...what?

Somewhere, Liliana was feeling incredibly insulted right now.

"Yeah, but it's way different inside!" Arden hastened to explain, because clearly that was what Erasmus's concern stemmed from, right? How it looked like it should possibly be condemned? "Inside, it's all expensive and decorated and clean and stuff. I think she likes the outside to look like something out of a horror movie to, like, either keep strangers away or because she thinks it's funny."

"Oh," Erasmus said, trying not to sound wistful. "That sounds nice..."

Probably it was to keep strangers away. Most necromancers didn't have a father around to ward their houses like Erasmus did, and, well. Vandalism was a problem.

Again, Liliana was feeling insulted. Vandals? Daring to attack her property?

"They throw parties pretty regularly," Arden offered. "Uh, I think the most recent one was in June? Celebrating their engagement. And they're open to the island, if you ever want to go. Same with the ones that Professor Stark and Captain Rogers throw."

"Oh, well," Erasmus said. Awkwardly. "I'm not gonna count my chickens before they're hatched, y'know?" Especially when it came to Professor Stark, since he was thinking of the other Professor Stark, you know, the one he'd mistaken for a serial killer.

Arden wasn't sure if it counted as counting chickens when the fliers literally went up around town, but she very much remembered being the awkward new kid who wasn't sure if she was actually invited to any of the adults' parties.

"Well, if you're ever unsure about something, text me? And I can try to help sort you out," she said. "I can put my info in your phone, if you'd like?"

"Really?" Erasmus asked, and pulled out his phone to hand it to her. "That would be great. Hey, if you're ever in the third floor common room, me and Riri--she's one of the other new students--we started this whiteboard thing, trying to make sense of all the, uh, weird stuff around here." Good luck with that, guys. "And you probably know a lot more weird stuff than we do. I mean, because you've been here longer." Not because your world sounded super weird, although maybe also that.

He had forgotten that he'd had the option to not live in the dorms, yes.

Arden snagged his phone and started to enter in her information, including her address. "Oh, I don't live in the dorms, I live in the boarding house on the other side of town," she said. "Midnight Manor. A...friend. Of mine. Set it up. Before I got here."

"Oh!" Erasmus exclaimed. "I...forgot that was an option." Because he had assumed none of this was going to come to fruition in the first place. "My bad."

"It's your first week in Fandom," Arden said with a sideways grin as she handed his phone back to him. "You could forget your name this week and everybody would understand. And I'm allowed in the dorms, but only with a short-term invite from a resident. So I could contribute to the whiteboard, but it'll probably be easier if I just text you stuff. Oh! Has anyone told you about radio yet?"

Yeah, Erasmus and Riri had talked about it in their conversation in the dorms, but the squirrels weren't that great at summaries.

Erasmus texted Arden, Hi, this is Erasmus, and nodded. "The squirrels, right? I asked Professor Atreides if they were enchanted, but she didn't know."

"They're drunks is what they are," Arden said. "Nosy drunks. Believe me, I do radio every Tuesday morning about stuff that happened on Monday, I know full well how nosy they are. And spiteful. Did lady Ghanima tell you how to avoid 'em, too?"

"I don't remember," Erasmus admitted after thinking about it for a moment. "She was giving me a lot of information very quickly while I was still stuck on the universe made out of shrimp, I think."

"The what?" Good news! That even threw a Fandom veteran! "Bribe them, usually with little nipper bottles of rum. You can buy alcohol at Caritas no matter how old you are, you can't drink at Devil's Nest unless you're twenty-one. Threats also work to get rid of squirrels, but they can get snippy about it."

"I dunno," Erasmus said. "It was something about...she said the island might be evolving instead of magic, and I said I didn't think rocks evolved, and she said there was a universe made out of shrimp. But I'm pretty sure this island is rocks, not shrimp. Which is good, because I know what shrimp smells like if you leave it in the sun." Gulf coast boy.

"So the squirrels that can understand English and read and write are also alcoholics," Erasmus said, like saying it aloud would make it sound any less insane.

"I...yeah, I didn't follow any of that," Arden confessed. "But, uh, yeah. To the best of my knowledge, the island is rocks and plants and magic and a weird sort of sentience? It's also a mom, there's a baby island nearby where there's an Ikea."

Sure, because that made so much more sense than a universe made out of shrimp, Arden.

"But yeah. About the squirrels I mean. Alcoholism, English, and a whole lot of nosiness. Put them in a floral dress and send them to brunch and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between them and a Southern prayer circle."

"Huh," Erasmus said. "I wonder if any of them have ever been to Pascagoula."

[Oh my god, talk about a blast from the past. My aunt and uncle had Ray Stevens tapes in their car. My brother loved them.]

"I absolutely would not be surprised," Arden said. "They have adventures. It's weird. It's just all very weird."

(Boogity, boogity!)

"I'll say," Erasmus said. "Well. Can't get much weirder, right?" Sir, you were going to be a pony tomorrow.

"Oh, oh no." Arden shook her head and gave Erasmus an apologetic smile. "No, uh, this is your introductory weird. It gets way, way, way weirder."

"Weirder?!" Pony, buddy. "How?" Careful, or you would turn into a shrimp.

"Uh, so there's when you become a kid, and then when your kids from different potential futures show up, uhhh...the week when the whole island loses its mind cause of, ah, pollen that induces pants-feels..."

Horny, Arden. For the love of the goddess, just say horny.

"Gremlins with hallucinagenic venom, weird weather, invasions..." The list went on, Erasmus.

"Invasions?" Erasmus repeated, just grabbing onto that last one because he couldn't process all of it at once. "Invasions of what?"

Give it a day or so. You'll find out.

"All sorts of things," Arden said. "Last Halloween--wait, no maybe the Halloween before - there were weird guys with TV heads that turned the island to a strip mall. And there was the time we were attacked by roadside attractions like a big ball of twine and a Paul Bunyan statue...oh, the real bad one was when parts of ourselves showed up to be awful..."

She would understand if you thought this was bull...shoot, Erasmus, it sure sounded like it.

Edited 2025-09-04 22:52 (UTC)

"You know, I really hope you're playing 'mess with the new guy' right now," Erasmus admitted, "but I'm afraid you're not."

Dealing With Other People's Trauma, Tuesday 9/2, 3rd period

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