Fandom High School

Max had had an... interesting weekend, and he he bet his students had as well. "Well," he began with a grin, "it's been an interesting semester. And it's been a pleasure to have all of you in this class." Yes. Even you, difficult women. "But we're almost done. Which means its almost time for your comprehensive final exam." And suddenly Max's grin was downright evil. "It's going to be extremely detailed, and likely rather difficult, so today we're going to be going over any questions you might have. Is there a topic we've discussed that you'd like to look at in more detail? Or something you had questions about? Now's the time to ask."

"Additionally, since part of the exam is going to be about practical applications, we're going to discuss which techniques and situations we've discussed this semester have turned out to be useful." Hopefully the answer wasn't going to turn out to be 'none of them'.

"I could ramble on and on with instructions for today, but we only have so much time and I already suspect we won't get to cover everything you need to know." It was going to be a brutal exam, after all. "So, let's get to it."

"Well," Max began without preamble. "This past week has certainly been interesting."

Apparently Max was pretty good with understatement. "And while I'm not exactly looking forward to a repeat anytime soon, recent events do present us with an interesting opportunity." Max paused to survey his students thoughtfully. "It turns out that you can learn a lot about the people you know, and about yourself, in stressful situations. We've spent this semester discussing ways to deal with difficult women, and some of you have been, to various degrees, dubious of the usefulness of such skills."

"It is possible that during this week, you've changed your mind. Perhaps you had to deal with a difficult woman out there in the fog. Or perhaps one helped you out and you've begun to realize why simple avoidance is a poor choice when it comes to dealing with them. It is, of course, possible that your stance on things hasn't changed at all, of course, but certainly some of you have had to rethink some of your positions."

"So today we're going to share those stories." He cocked his head slightly to one side as he eyed his students. "And don't think that just because you haven't changed your opinions that you get to avoid sharing. If you didn't learn anything particularly new during the week, then you'll need to talk about what you did and speculate about what the impact that adding a difficult woman to the situation might have had for you."

As he walked into class, Max looked around at his students thoughtfully.

"We're now a little over two thirds of the way through this semester, which means that there are only a few classes after this one. I'm going to go ahead and give you your homework assignment for today now so that we don't have interrupt discussion for it later. I've tried to teach you all as much as I can on the subject of difficult women because living with them is important." Max grinned. "In large part because living without them is supremely boring. But in the short time we've had, there's just no way I can teach you everything there is to know on the subject. If there's a specific question or situation that you feel I haven't covered well enough, let me know. There are still a couple of weeks left and I can shift my plans around for the upcoming classes."

Max rolled his shoulder slightly to loosen them up. "And with that out of the way, let's get down to today's business."

"I hope you remember some of the discussions we had back at the beginning of the semester about how to deal with a difficult woman who is in a position of authority. If you need a refresher see me after class. Anyway, it turns out to be almost equally difficult to deal with such women when they are subordinates. Even when you're the one officially in charge, some people think they're the ones who should be because they so obviously know what you should be doing." And just because they were often right about that was no reason to let them take over.

"One of the reasons this situation is difficult is that many of the techniques that you can employ when under the authority of a difficult woman, a difficult woman can employ when under your authority. Subtle resistance, minor delays, careful suggestion and guidance. When you're in a hurry to get something done, all of these can be highly problematic the timely completion of your goals. That will be our topic for this week and the next."

Looking over his students once again, Max nodded to himself. "This week we'll be discussing people and situations in which this is a problem we have to deal with, as well as talking about the solutions we've found to be successful in the past. Next week, I'll suggest a couple of techniques which no one brings up today."

"The dynamics of power and authority are tricky at the best of times. Adding difficult women to the mix takes things from 'tricky' to 'perilous'. The situation is only made trickier by the fact that you usually don't want to simply dismiss them since in addition to difficult, they often tend to be highly competent. So, let's share. Hopefully we'll all learn something."

Max looked mighty relaxed as he arrived at class. Apparently the week off had been relaxing. Speaking of...

"I hope each of you enjoyed your week off," he said as he looked around. "Which means that it's been two weeks since we last met, and that you've hopefully been in some new places during that time. Normally we'd jump right back into things here without some sort of 'easy' class, but I'm actually curious enough that today we're actually just going to have a simple discussion."

"During the past week many of you probably traveled, you met new people, or you at least saw people you know in new situations. Some of those people were inevitably difficult women." Or, you know, just difficult. "Now, it is my hope that the things you learn in this class are applicable in your day to day lives, so today we're simply going to discuss some of the situations we found ourselves in since we last met." Max grinned suddenly, "And you're free to talk about someone you 'just met over the break' if you want to keep yourself safe from someone who actually knows you."

After a second to look around, Max pointed someone out at random. "You're up. But don't worry, everyone's going to get a turn."

"I feel like breaking into groups last week ended up being quite productive," Max began. Even if he was worried that some of his students were learning far too much for his peace of mind. Still, considering that some of his students insisted that they didn't know any difficult women, it was well worth increasing the world's supply.

"Additionally, I believe seeing some of the things I'm trying to teach in action provided a better understanding of what we're trying to learn here. Demonstrations are always more useful than theory, after all. So with that in mind, I've asked someone else to assist me this week, and luckily for all of you, she graciously agreed."

( He grinned over at... )

"Exactly," Max agreed. "Now, much like last week, we'll be splitting into discussion groups. Both Ghnima and I have been involved in these sorts of situations from different directions, so we each have different perspectives. Pick the one you think will be most helpful to you."

As the students arrived in class for the day, Max looked over them thoughtfully. He'd roughly divided them into into three categories: those who got exactly what the class was about and why it mattered, those who didn't, and the difficult women who had somehow gotten into the class through various errors in what he was sure was a massive conspiracy intended to drive him insane. The first group was fine, and there wasn't anything he could do about the third group. The second group, however... well, he was going to make one last attempt to help them move into the first group. Or at least closer to it.

He took a deep breath and began. "Some of you know why the skills this class seeks to teach are extremely important," and some of them were the reason those skills were important, but Max was good at this so he knew better than to actually point that out, "but some of you don't know any difficult women." Which was something Max found hard to believe, especially given the students he knew from Fandom, but he wasn't going to discount the possibility. After all, and again: Fandom.

"So today's lecture will, hopefully, be short while being highly illustrative at the same time."

Max began pacing slowly back and forth in front of the class as he continued. "While some of you don't know any difficult women at this stage in your lives, you're all still young enough that you might one day be lucky enough for that to change." He paused and swept his eyes across the room. "Last week we talked about the difficult women you can't avoid because they're family or because their friends of people you want to spend time with. This week I us to examine those same women from a different angle: why they're worth knowing."

"I mentioned the woman a good friend of mine is besotted with. And I've met few more difficult women in my life, let me tell you." Which was saying something since, you know, it was Max. "But while she's incredibly infuriating most of the time, and seems to derive an uncomfortable degree of enjoyment from driving me crazy, I can't think of anyone I'd rather have break me out of a magically-warded maximum-security prison after I was falsely accused beating a bastard nearly to death." Not that this had actually happened, of course. Max was, after all, simply a lowly soldier.

Though Max probably would have nearly beaten the bastard to death if he'd actually had the chance...

"The point I'm making is that even if you don't know any difficult women right now, you need to pay attention and learn the skills I'm trying to impart to you because it turns out that the women it's useful to have around often turn out to be difficult." And competent, compelling, attractive, or even all-of-the-above. Not that he was about to admit any of that in a room containing difficult women. "It's important to know how to live with difficult women because much of the time simply avoiding them isn't a very good response, especially in the long run."

"Last week we talked about difficult women we know. This week we're going to talk about why it's worth figuring out how to live with them. You may, if you wish, pick a different woman from the one you spoke about last week." After all, who didn't know multiple difficult women? He looked around a bit doubtfully again. "For those of you who don't know any difficult women," he still didn't believe you, really, "feel free to mention a difficult woman you've heard of who it might be useful to know. Now," he pointed randomly, "you first."

Max had spent a large chunk of the past week rethinking precisely how he was going to run this class with all the... women in it. He hadn't really come up with a solution he liked, but it was class time now so it was apparently time to go with a solution he didn't much care for.

"Welcome back, everyone," he began as he looked around at his students. "This class is intended to be a practical one, but for us to do that we're going to have to be candid with one another. That, however, requires trust, and we don't all know one another that well." He quirked an eyebrow, wondering if anyone was going to challenge that assertion. "We're going to try to remedy that." He grinned suddenly before adding, "The trust part."

"You're going to pair up. Then each of you is going to share a deeply private secret with the other one. That way each of you will know that if you violate the trust of the other students in this class, someone else here holds a serious piece of information to punish you with. If the person you're partnered with judges your secret to be insufficiently powerful, they can demand another, so you're better off sharing one major thing than being forced to go through a dozen things that almost qualify."

Max let a hard gaze drift slowly across the room, letting it rest on each student until he felt he'd driven home how serious he was. "Understand this: by receiving these secrets you're being entrusted with something important. Violating that trust is not something I will tolerate. The only reason we're doing this is to help everyone to feel like the can be candid because they'll know that everyone has shared something here they don't want spread around."

He gestured to the handwavy list he had up. "I've assigned partners randomly. Find yours and get to it. I'll be stopping by to check on how each of you are doing."

"Oh, and Pendragon, Cauthon, I want to see each of you after class."