Fandom High School

"Well, we've arrived at the end of our time together," Herc said, "and you've been a brilliant group, thank you for putting up with me. I thought about giving you a final exam, but this isn't really the kind of thing you can take a test on, is it? So instead I'd like for all of you to think about something you want to protect from scrutiny, since that's what a lot of this has been about. You can share with the class, or you can opt not to. It's entirely up to you. And I hope you all have a great summer, and that I'll see some of you again."

Today's class was something it had occurred to Herc he needed to cover for one person in particular, though it would probably go in one ear and out the other much like ninety percent of what he told him. "Now, I know some of you are probably still recovering from recent events, so this isn't going to be a particularly heavy duty class. Let's talk about your coworkers," Herc began. "There are really two things we're talking about here, how you deal with your coworkers, who might be not famous and kind of weirded out by your fame, and how you, as a public person, talk about your coworkers." Chuck. "I can't really help you with the first one, I have to admit, but it's something to consider. As far as the second part, it's really important to consider what you say and how it might be perceived." To be fair, this was something all Hansen men had a problem with. "For example, say you're an actor working on a movie and someone asks you what you think of your costar. You almost never see an interview where--" shit, who was popular these days? "--where Jennifer Lawrence says that Ryan Gosling or whoever is a real pain in the ass to work with, a terrible actor and it's definitely his fault the movie's gonna be bad. There are reasons for that. It doesn't make you look good, it makes you look petty. Sometimes it's a good idea to be a little more circumspect, even if it means not exactly telling what you think of as the truth, because the truth won't help your situation." Chuck. Oh, who was Herc kidding? "Right, so, just something to keep in mind. Now, I don't really have an activity for this week, but if anyone wants to talk about what happened with that whole mess, or thinks petting Max would make them feel better, we're here for you." Especially Max. Max was great at comforting people.

"Once you become famous," Herc began today's class, "your life is not only your own any more. It belongs to the public; specifically, to your fans. 'Oh,' I can hear some of you thinking, 'I'm not going to be that kind of famous,' but you would be surprised at what people can be fans of. Now, we've touched on this earlier, talking about the internet and the things people might say that you should just ignore, they're not really for you, but dealing with fans directly is a whole other kettle of fish, and not always one you're going to have any control over. You might be in line at the grocery store, trying to buy milk, and someone comes up to you wanting a photo, or an autograph, or to ask you some really intrusive questions or pinch your bum--" not that that had ever happened to him or anything, ahem "--because sometimes people forget that the people they look up to are people too, and that there are lines. And being rude to your fans is generally considered a bad idea, since these are, after all, people who have committed no greater crime than thinking you're really awesome." He paused, then admitted, "Except for the ones unthinkingly committing sexual assault. Most people won't blame you for being rude to them. I'm not going to tell you how to deal with having fans, because it's something I'm not that good at, either." Living on a military base helped with insulating himself from that kind of thing, and then their popularity had taken a nosedive for a while there. "But it is something to think about and be aware of. How you treat your fans matters, not just to your public persona or whatever, but to them, as people.

"Now, I'm going to open the floor to discussion," he declared. "I want to hear your thoughts, and any questions or strategies you might have as far as dealing with fans goes."

"I'm going to assume some of you have been watching the Winter Olympics," Herc said today, "or at least are aware they're happening. Now, this is not my preferred Olympics," because his country sucked at them, "but there are a lot of things to learn from them. A lot of these athletes are not famous for the rest of the year, and a lot of them will go back to being not famous after these Games are over. But for the moment, they're getting microphones shoved in their faces and their names and words and actions broadcast all over international television."

He cued up a video on the screen at the front of the room. "This is Evgeni Plushenko," he explained. "He's not really an example of 'not always famous,' but I want you to watch him demonstrate an important skill." He pushed play, and Plushenko told an American reporter that his back was bothering him a bit, but he was going to rest a day and then get ready for the next part of the competition, after which the reporter immediately asked him, in light of what he'd just said about his back bothering him, if he was planning to participate in the next part of the competition. Plushenko didn't turn an eyelash, just repeated that like he'd said before, he was definitely planning to do so.

"Now, obviously," Herc continued once he'd paused the clip, "we can all agree that this reporter is not paying attention to the words coming out of her interview subject's mouth. But he doesn't let that get to him, he doesn't show that he's irritated, though he surely must be, he just answers the question and acts like a professional." Chuck, were you listening? Were you? "So, your job today is to pair up, and take turns asking each other stupid questions and responding calmly and professionally to those questions."

"I'm afraid something came up that made it a bit tricky for me to get my lesson together for this week the way I'd planned, and I'm sorry for that," Herc said, by which he meant both that he was sorry for not getting their lesson together and sorry he'd spent most of his week on teleconference at odd hours with the UN. "So this week you get to watch

Herc had, upon getting a good look at his class roster this morning, considered just turning around and leaving and not doing this to himself, but in the end it turned out he was a glutton for punishment. By the time he arrived for class, no one would guess he'd spent most of the morning pacing in his office and muttering pep talks to himself while Max looked on in doggy confusion.

"Right, listen up," he said as he entered the room with Max on his heels, only a minute or two late, "I'm Herc Hansen--that's Mr. Hansen to you lot--and this is Max. Max has run of the classroom, so be nice to him." Herc suspected that wouldn't be hard. "But I want you paying attention to me, not--not my dog." The back of his mind kicked over to panicking over how he'd deal, what he'd say, when Chuck finally thought to wonder why Max was with him now. The rest of him kept going with his carefully rehearsed speech. "If you're here, you're either famous, or you think you might be someday, or you're not sure why you're here but hey, might be useful for you someday too, right? You never know. Take me. I used to fly helicopters. I was pretty good at it, but I wasn't anything special, and then--well. Things changed. I turned out to be able to do something that needed doing, something very few people could do. Something that had nothing at all to do with flying helicopters. We were all famous all of a sudden, and some of us dealt with that better than others." His brother, for example, had dealt with it really, really badly. "So," he said, a wry twist at the corner of his mouth, "I'm hoping you can learn from me.

"Now, you've probably had to introduce yourselves a fair few times already this week, but I don't know all of you yet, so we're gonna do that. Name, why you're in the class, what you'd like to learn from it if you have some idea already. Go."

When they'd finished, he steeled himself and added, "Chuck, if you could please see me after class. I have a job for you."