Fandom High School

Any student foolish enough to actually try getting to class today would find the classroom locked, and a note on the door.

Something bad is happening. Dogs can sense these things. RUN AWAY WHILE YOU STILL HAVE TIME!

Best Wishes,
Mr. Peanutbutter

There was a sign on the classroom door when the students arrived:

Today's class has been cancelled.
Please enjoy an episode of a syndicated police procedural
There's always one on somewhere. . . .

[ooc: this week's class is brought to you by a temporary failure of executive function. Nyeah.]

When the students entered the classroom today, they'd find all the desks shoved haphazardly against the walls, and several podiums in the center of the room, each with a student's name written on it in comic sans. Mr. Peanutbutter was standing by the chalkboard wearing a fuschia suit, his fur immaculately combed, a long-handled microphone in one hand.

He missed the giant replica Mr. Peanutbutter head.

"Hello students!" he greeted expansively. Much the way a talk show host might greet her audience at the end of each commercial break. "Welcome back to: Learnin! With Mr. Peanutbutter! Now, I know the class doesn't look quite like it normally does. That's because it's mid-season -- er, I mean, 'midterms' --" You know that got fingerquotes. "-- which means it's time to mix things up! It's also, I believe, time for the traditional 'midterm exam'. Hope you all have been studying!"

He might be mixing up midterms with pop quizzes. Sorry, folks.

"I'd like to thank the production team from the late, great, 'JD Salinger's Hollywoo Stars and Celebrities What Do They Know Do They Know Things Let's Find Out' for the loan of the supplies for today's midterm. You can catch reruns of HSACWDTKDTKTLFO Mondays through Fridays on TLC at 3 PM, 4 central, and don't forget to check out JD Salinger's next telvision project -- whatever that might turn out to be!" hey, check it out, kids. Your classes now came with sponsor plugs. Have fun with that. "Now, everybody take your places at your podiums please, and we'll get started. I'm going to ask each of you a question. If you get it right, you'll move on to the rest of the semester. Get it wrong, and you'll face --" He paused, as though waiting for a musical cue or possibly audience participation. Neither happened. "The lightning round!" The lights flashed dramatically. Because Mr. Peanutbutter flicked the light switch on and off. "Our lightning round challenge today is to clean this chalkboard and all of the erasers while somehow making use of --" He pulled a colander from under the desk and held it up for all of the students to see. "-- This spaghetti strainer." He looked up towards where he'd arbitrarily decided the camera was today. "Spaghetti strainers. Take it from a dog who knows: you can never have enough."

What happened if you failed the lightning round? Did you get kicked out of class, doomed never to finish the semester?

You should be so lucky. But no. The answer was nothing. There were no consequences for failing this midterm whatsoever.

"But enough chatter. Let's get started, shall we?" He pointed to the first student on the end of the row of podiums. "You! Are you ready for a MIDTEEEEEEEEEEERM!?"

Arriving at the classroom, the students would find a sign on the door instructing them to meet out on the "quad". Was there a quad at Fandom? Probably not, to be honest. But leaving the school building, they'd eventually find Mr. Peanutbutter on a broad expanse of grass between the classrooms and the dorms. He had forgone his hipster glasses and tweed jacket, instead wearing just his usual track pants and tshirt combination.

He had a whistle hanging around his neck, though.

Foreboding.

"Welcome back!" he greeted expansively, arms spread. "I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing fall break, full of only the most entertaining and cinematic of adventures." Sure. That's what breaks were about. "Today I thought it was time to tackle one of the most important, yet divisive of school subjects: physical education." He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace in front of the gathered students, looking thoughtful. "It was Baron Pierre de Coubertin who first emphasized the importance of sport in modern education. He thought it so important, in fact, that he even founded the modern Olympic games. They were quite a fiasco for several years, but that didn't undermine his point: learning from books was all well and good, but nothing beat some time applying that learning out in the field. The ball field!"

Baron Pierre de Coubertin was a subject of a whole episode of Hollywoo Stars and Celebrities What Do They Know Do They Know Things Let's Find Out. In case anyone was wondering why Mr. Peanutbutter suddenly seemed to know something.

"Today we're going to play one of the great classics of scholastic sporting." Mr. Peanutbutter picked up a red rubber ball. "Dodgeball! Now, I know, I know." He held up a hand. "This is the sort of game that either you love, or you hate. But then, so is math and reading, and I already covered both of those subjects, so dodgeball gets a week, too." Because you could totally cover all of math and reading in a week. "We're not going to play any old ordinary version of dodgeball though, no, not when we only just learned about Baron Pierre de Coubertin! We're going to play Greek dodgeball."

That's right, that wiki entry is titled "Prisonball". Buckle up, kids.

"The main difference between traditional dodgeball and Greek dodgeball is that you are never truly out. When you get hit by a ball, or someone catches a ball that you threw, you go to the other team's 'prison' on the borders of their territory. From there, if you catch a stray ball, you can hit one of your opponents with it and get back 'in'." That's right, so a winning team could potentially find themselves attacked on four fronts. Best game ever. "Why, I've seen a team come back from a near devastating loss to win the whole game by getting balls to the prisoners in a timely manner. There's just no telling what might happen!"

And just no escaping the possibility of being pelted in the head by a large red rubber ball.

Fun!

"Now I know team picking can be a little bit tough for the less popular students, so never fear: I've assigned you to teams based on who arrived at class first. It's the only fair way to do it." He quickly pointed out the teams, then directed them to either side of the game field, marked out by little orange cones to indicate both sides' "in" zones, and their prisons. Then he blew his whistle as loud as he could. "Let's get physicaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal!"

Mr. Peanutbutter was looking almost twitchy, now. He had on his hipster glasses and his leather patched jacket and now he was even wearing a tie, artistically loosened -- over his v-neck tshirt. He still hadn't received any notes on how he was doing. Diane said the show was doing fine now, after the rocky start (which he didn't even know he'd had, seriously, where were his notes?!), something about digital content and Secretariat? Which had almost made Bojack look like he might be an Oscar contender, so must be a good thing. But still, Mr. Peanutbutter had never worked with so little guidance from a director. He was absolutely never working with this hack team again. Never let it be said that Mr. Peanutbutter wouldn't finish out his contract, though. He was no Hollywoo diva. He was in this for the rest of the semester.

Buckle in, kids.

"Welcome back, students!" he greeted when the bell rang, the twitchiness vanishing as if by magic. (It was magic: the magic . . . of acting!) That bell was like a director calling action. All the nerves and worries and script issues just bled away and real life Mr. Peanutbutter was immediately replaced with television darling Mr. Peanutbutter. He was such a good boy. "So we've managed to cover two of the three R's in class so far: writing and 'rrrrrrrrrithmetic. Let's take on that last R: reading."

He circled the desk and sat down on it, leaning forward. "Can I get real with you kids for a moment?" Of course he could, he'd taken the traditional 'get real with you' stance. "I do not like reading. Never got into the habit of it! And really, the book is a dying form. Do not tell my wife I said that." He chuckled, then got serious again. "But when you're in school, reading is important. You may never read another thing the rest of your life after you leave here." Please, please be sure to read other things after you leave here. "But while you're still learning, it's for some reason very important.

"Now, I had the good fortune to work with literary genius J.D. Salinger on my last television project: 'Hollywoo Stars and Celebrities What Do They Know Do They Know Things Let's Find out'." It was amazing how he was able to rattle that whole title off like it was nothing. "And while I was preparing for that show, I did some reading. I read the entire Cliff's Notes for Receiver in the Wheatfield and you know what? I did not understand it at all! I mean, just look at the title. Shouldn't that be about fetch? No one threw any sticks or balls or anything. It was just some kid complaining about how hard being a kid is! I couldn't relate in the least. Which is, of course, the true sign of great literature." You've all learned not to pay any attention at all to him, right? Oh god. "So today we're going to take some time to do some 'SSR', which is not, as you might guess, the new hip way of referring to the United Soviet States of Russia." Nobody thought that, Mr. Peanutbutter. And not just because that wasn't what "USSR" actually stood for. "It's 'Sustained, Silent Reading'. Doesn't that sound great?" It didn't. "Now some of you might be the nerdy type who actually just carries books of your own around for fun, but reading for pleasure is not the point of high school reading classes. So I do not want to see any fun books in here, today. Instead, I've brought some books from the library for you all to choose from!" He picked up a stack of large, dusty books and started to pass them out to the students. "We'll read for most of the class, and then I'd like each of you to give a short report on what you read and how you might use it to further your education. Let's get started, shall we?"

Mr. Peanutbutter was wearing glasses today. Not his sunglasses, no. Also, oddly, not his actual reading glasses. But a thick-framed set of prescriptionless glasses that he felt lent him a more scholarly air. He still hadn't received any notes on his performance in the first two episodes of the show, and he was starting to worry and make strange artistic choices.

Just wait until he decided to get himself a tweed jacket with elbow patches. It's gonna go great with his blue track pants and purple sneakers.

"Ah, welcome back, students!" he greeted when the bell rang. "It's time for another rousing educational adventure here at --" he looked to where he suspected one of the cameras might be hidden "-- Learnin' With Mr. Peanutbutter." He looked back at the class and adjusted his glasses. "Now I was thinking we ought to tackle math today. But I decided I still need to do a bit more research before I can really give that a proper go --" ie. he needed to rewatch Nice Bill Hunter again "-- so instead, let's take a look at a 'social' science high on everybody's minds in today's crazy culture: politics."

This would possibly end in tears.

"Now, I don't know a lot about politics, but I know what I like." He liked positive messages stated in self-important, commanding tones. "And I know that the way we tend to talk about politics these days can make them seem really tremendously boring." So boring. Why weren't the candidates talking more about sticks? They used to always talk about sticks. And speaking quietly. "It might seem to someone of your generation like modern politics has nothing to do with you. You just can't relate." The fact that to a large percentage of the class, modern politics really literally had nothing to do with them has still managed to elude him. "But if I've learned anything at all from Broadway, it's to project all the way to the back of the audience." He was great at projecting! "Also, that the way to make a political debate interesting is to make it into a rap battle. And rap is like poetry, only more fun! So today we're going to take those master poet skills we learned last week and apply them to the great political questions of our time!"

No, seriously, tears. Quite possibly Mr. Peanutbutter's.

Mr. Peanutbutter lounged at the teacher's desk as the students filed in. His feet, clad in purple high top sneakers, were propped up on the desk, his arms folded behind his head, his sunglasses in place over his eyes. His mouth was open, showing his full set of gleaming Hollywoo-white canine fangs. His tongue lolled out the side of his mouth.

Every now and then he twitched, paws moving as though he were dreaming about chasing rabbits. But that was silly, he hadn't chased any rabbits since he was in high school! And it was always consensual chasing. It isn't nice to chase rabbits who aren't interested in being chased, no matter how short their skirts are.

At precisely the time that the class period was to start, an old-fashioned school bell rang. Was that bell always there? Unimportant. It's there now, and it's going to ring at the start and end of every one of Mr. Peanutbutter's classes. Better get used to that now, kids.

Mr. Peanutbutter awoke with a start and let out three barks, his sunglasses sliding down his muzzle to show his wide eyes. Then he blinked, yawned theatrically, and slid his sunglasses up to their customary position on top of his head. "Oh hi there!" he said, smiling charmingly at the class. "I didn't see you come in. Is it time for class already?" He chuckled. "Oh my, where does the time go."

He stood up and walked around his desk like an actor hitting his next mark, and leaned casually against it. "Welcome to Learnin' With Mr. Peanutbutter. Before we get started, let me just pass out some worksheets, here. Nothing to be worried about, just standard contracts: you agree to be filmed, your image and name can be used in promotional material by the network in perpetuity, you'll never sue, yadda yadda. This really should have been taken care of before I even got out to set this morning, but you know how reality television can be. Hoo boy!" He finished passing out the papers, which were photocopied pages of college ruled notebook paper with 'YOU'RE IN MY SHOW!' written on them, a little drawing of Mr. Peanutbutter doing a thumbs up in the corner, and a slightly squiggly line with an X next to it for the signature. He dusted his paws off and rested them on his hips.

"Now that that's taken care of --" though, no, he had not confirmed in any way at all that any of those contracts were signed, not that it mattered, as he didn't have any cameras, this wasn't a set, and the reason his producers hadn't gotten the students' contracts signed ahead of time was that they were in Detroit, wondering where the hell their star was already. "-- Let's get down to business, shall we? The business -- of learning!" He winked at the students and chuckled again. "It's our first class together, so you know what that means: time for me to shock you all out of your teenage ennui with unconventional teaching style. You!" He pointed suddenly at a student in the front row. "Up on your desk and introduce yourself! Now, student!" he barked. Literally. Then howled, then cut himself off with another friendly chuckle. "Very nice." Once again, he made no move to make sure his orders were actually being followed. "All of you, up on your desks! It's a classic for a reason! Tell me your names or any random thing you've just now decided to be called for the entire remainder of your high school career! Then tell me your hopes and dreams! All of them! We've got time!"

They did not have time.