Thursday DE: it came to me in a dream

[needsmoreresearch]

Get the cone of shame, it's silly AU time. Specifically, High School AU. A while back I had a dream, honest to god, that all us Milliways people were in a high-school art class, taught by Maru. Why? I don’t know. But inspired by that: let’s talk about where our characters fit in the old classic Highschool AU. Teacher or student? Art club? Debate team? Star quarterback?

I realize a lot of the Highschool AU tropes are very...very American. But man, if you want to, please have a go at translating them to wherever is appropriate?

Comments

[i_am_your_host]

Emcee would be the flamboyant and eccentric musical theater teacher from Germany. Because of course.

And Pam would be SUCH a mean girl.

[arcane_mixologist]

And Eliot would be one of his fans, though I'm not sure if Eliot is musically inclined. He'd like still take the class just for Emcee.

[onceaviking]

Would she be interested in the Swedish exchange student?
(Awfully good looking, classic jock - except sort of squishy on the inside?)

[yinyangwizard]

Student!Seimei is trying to convince Emcee to stage his best friend's experimental one-act comedy.

[i_am_your_host]

Oh, and since musical theater would most likely be an elective and not offered every semester, Emcee would also double as a languages teacher as well, for French and German. He would use foreign films as teaching aides, though really it would just be an excuse to watch movies in class.

[yakalskovich]

I was teaching an art class? What a very fun idea. Was it the muns I was teaching, or the charries?

My characters would be:

Father Harman: teacher. If this was a Catholic / Jesuit run highschool, he might even be a department head.
Teja: teacher, shop class and/or PE
Hannibal: teacher, music and/or art. He'd be the one about whom people whisper -- he invites his favourite students to fabulous meals at his own place, followed by talk about cultural history by his fireplace. On the other hand, quite a number of his students do come to grief in bizarre ways, to the point where one or two attempted suicide because they were failing his classes.
Dorian: student. Artsy and airy, seduces everybody, totally ruthless when he dumps them.
Ragnar: student, almost classic jock with lots of sports and actual American football (but good t baseball as well), apart from the part where is background is quite working class and he is friend with geeks like Floki, and pursues Athelstan, in whatever capacity he's in that AU in addition to being with fiery, sportsy, non-nonsense Lagertha.
Madame Thénardier: female janitor, never does anything except take breaks. People keep falling over her mop where it is leaning.
Lady Margolotta: librarian
Katrina Crane: teacher -- history, probably. People think her weird, and her views about some things are definitely quite alternative.
The Jólasveinar: students, terrible misbehaved rednecks with the usual messy home life; their mother is on her third husband, and for enough of them to be there at once, they would have to be patchworked together from all the previous husbands -- everybody dumped their kids on Gryla. Their physical home is a cat-infested dump, and they steal food.

[gods_that_haunt_me]

Floki's favorite things in life would be shop class and Dungeons & Dragons. And he totally has a crush on this hippie chick but doesn't know how to ask her out.

[leeshajoy]

Twilight and Luna are part of a canon high school AU (and we kind of wish they weren't). So is Amethyst, if you count Hilary Florido's promo art for the episodes she co-writes.

[bjornwilde]

Ahsoka: Taking a page from fanart, Ahsoka is a foreign exchange student from Africa. She is very into sports and less into academics, though she does well enough not to threaten her team activities.
Sabine: Art student and biker chick. She's very counter culture yet is also on the gymnastics team. She tends to get in trouble doing free running on campus. Shop and chemestry, as well as art, are her strongest subjects.
Selina: Another who doesn't blend in with the main class. She does poorly with classes, ignores sports, and gets in trouble with staff due to her graffiti habits.

I am totally in love with the idea of these three being close friends.

Sam: Nice Jock (tm). He's been friends with Hank since they were kids. Alternately, Sam is a PE coach who always has time for the kids when they need to talk. The kids also know they can trust his discretion. Sam also has a habit of coaching the team sports that don't have a lot of popular support.
Hank: Total geek. Very smart and too smart for his own good. I'm tempted to take a page from the comics and have him be a reluctant jock who only joined the football team on a dare/challenge and proved to be so good no one will let he off the team. He's a little jealous of Sam's new friend Steve.
Rollo: Jock and a slightly mean one who can take jokes too far. He also used to be misogynistic but his current girlfriend, Siggy, is knocking that nonsense out of his personality.

Another group of peeps I am tempted to say are friends. I especially like the idea of Rollo trying to get Hank to do his homework and Sam defending Hank and making Rollo be tutored instead.

Eliot: One of the more popular kids and a prefect for the school. He tends to let kids get away with things if he can, though there will be a price later. He's not picky about whom he's friends with and will be pleasant with just about everyone, regardless of clique. He also flirts with anyone and is the head of the LGBTA club.
Amelia: Another prefect. Unlike Eliot, she's tends to force bribes to let kids get away with things. She's also one of the popular kids, tending towards a mean girl, and has the majority of the teachers looking favorably on her. She is wicked at math and is already taking college level classes.
Izana: The last prefect. They honestly try to be fair with enforcing the rules, gives out the least punishment they can, and is generally liked by everyone. Despite being gender queer, no one picks on them as nearly the entire student body would rise up to defend them. Izana is also the other co-lead to the LGBTA club.

And I think these three mostly respect each other. Amelia would approve of Eliot's snark and cattiness, but roll her eyes at Izana's mercy and general niceness.

[harryhotspur]

Oh god.

Harry is super jock, of course, his dad is probably the coach or maybe even like the assistant principal or something.

Liz is antisocial art class girl.

Viola uh-- is the movie She's the Man, I guess.

Segundus and Marius are both shy nerd nerd nerds. Assuming there's no magic to study, Segundus might be into math or science or something. Senior year, Marius suddenly starts wearing only black and puts a picture of Napoleon in his locker and everyone thinks it's super weird.

Oh Arabella would just be a nice, sweet, middlingly popular girl-- not bitchy enough to really ascend the social ladder, but funny and kind enough to get along with everyone. Plus that super rich popular dude is always asking her out.

[genarti]

But won't Marius be surprised halfway through his senior year when transfer student Cosette switches from glasses to contacts, becomes super hot, and pulls him into a different genre for her heartwarming Becoming Popular And Getting The Guy plotline!

[inanhour]

Clint would teach physics, probably. There would be way more experiments than in most highschools.

Melinda would be quiet but have a lot of popular friends, as part of being on the cheer squad. Her bestie is a supernerd, though.

Chuck would not be a jock! Too many people D:. In a large enough highschool, he'd be a lighting or sound tech for the drama nerds (preferably lighting). In one without a full drama club, he might be on the swim team or otherwise just avoid after school activities so he can go home and play with his dog. If he wasn't in anything, he wouldn't really have any continuing friends from year to year.

Darcy hates high school, booooo. She was a band kid, though.

Sebastian is popular! He's nice and pretty and good at things without ever really being the best at anything. Also, he goes out of his way to make friends.

[harryhotspur]

but do Viola and Sebastian ever switch places so Viola can take Sebastian's math tests for him

[just_cant_lose]

*hollow laugh* Don't talk to me about school AU's.


Gene - that one student who's always surrounded by a group of lads, yelling at girls across the playground, smoking behind the bike sheds, kicking a football through classroom windows and then skiving off to go and get drunk in the park.

Javert - school security? That's a thing in some schools, right? Or maybe just vice-principal, and the one in charge of Discipline, because...

...Valjean is the benevolent headmaster, giving all his time and energy to these kids, not having a life himself in an effort to make sure every single one of these children leaves with good prospects for the future. Literally stays up nights worrying about failing any of them.

Courfeyrac is a popular student who excels effortlessly at just about everything, and manages to be well-liked despite it. All the girls fancy him and he fancies them right back.

Bruce Wayne is the quiet kid who people respect, but are a bit wary of. Everyone knows he's an orphan and really rich, but when some jerks tried to bully him he knocked every one of them on their backsides and wasn't sorry. Most people leave him alone, quite a lot feel sorry for him and the few that do talk to him think he's nice enough, but really troubled.

Bruce Banner is president of the science club, and school geek. Except he also doesn't get bullied because a) he's smarter than everyone else, and b) he's got a hell of a temper if you push him too far. Mostly he just melts into the background, and is OK with that.

Pearly is the school psycho, always being pushed into counselling which never does any good. Even the teachers know he's going to end badly, but they still try with him.

Aubrey is like a richer version of Gene, except a lot more sweet and awkward around women, and a lot more academically inclined whenever teachers can get him away from his hobbies. He's a bit of a gentle buffoon, but impossible not to like. Strangely talented at maths and music, practically useless at English.

And Jim...ahh, Jim. He's the quiet, skinny lad in the back that no one ever really notices except to roll their eyes that he's come top of the class again. If anyone tries to give him shit he just takes it, and no one seems to equate that with the way their stuff goes missing, and their pets die in mysterious circumstances.

[i_am_your_host]

Seems to me that Jim's favorite teacher is Hannibal.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Gordon is the quiet weird kid who'd sit in the back and do work for his other classes during boring lectures if he could get away with it, but the teacher saw his glasses and the fact that he skipped like two grades and moved him up to the front row and gave his name in front of the whole class, very loudly. People tried to bully him a few times and around about the third attempt he went berserk and they had to get the school nurse involved. He's trying to get as many AP courses as possible so he can bug out of high school and at least a year of college as soon as he can.

Shephard does sit in the back and gives the impression of not paying attention or giving a damn, but he turns in extremely neat and highly acceptable papers and homework so the teachers stay off his back. The gym teacher loves him. He ditches school once or twice a year for the opening days of various hunting and fishing seasons.

Ellen is something of a social neglectee. The mean girls don't really notice her; they have more interesting targets. The principal intensely dislikes her and gives her a hard time because her father humiliated him some time ago over his markedly incorrect decisions. The teachers tend to like her, but don't much want to cross the principal about it. One day in junior year she vanishes from school and they don't hear about her again until some kind of breakout of violence on the grounds, at which point they find out the local police department will hire you as a conflict negotiator and/or police sniper if you have a GED and meet their other standards. The administrators thank her privately and give her a diploma for services earned, but tell her not to show up at graduation because she'd just distract people from the other students. She never sets foot on campus again.

Varric is the class snarker. Not the class clown; he knows those get the teachers riled up. He does, however, get away with amazing things in his column for the school newspaper. Columns, actually- he writes a romance advice column under a pseudonym. everyone loves it except his brother, who's two years ahead of him and would prefer his younger brother not embarrass him and ruin his chances of getting a full ride to Harvard.

Wee Mad Arthur is on the wrestling team. Or was. He bit one of his opponents.

Stacker Pentecost is considered a teacher's pet and incredibly uptight by his fellow students, although he does disturbingly well in gym class for someone wearing a Medic-Alert bracelet. He has the most impressive car of anyone allowed to own a car on campus, which he pays for through an ongoing tutoring/homework assistance deal with one of the less reputable guys at the local vo-tech.

Santo is a cross between a really skilled gym coach and Mr. Feeny from Boy Meets World.

Fawkes is the big quiet linebacker who shocks the entire English department one day by delivering a world-class rendition of some Shakespeare soliloquy or other.

And Hernan Guerra is the bad kid who ditches class on a regular basis and hangs out behind the bleachers, but has enough skill in his preferred subjects that the principal can't really count him out entirely.

[never_promised]

Lesgle and Varric are such buddies on the school newspaper.

[genarti]

Thor is The Popular Jock, 100%. Captain of the football team! Captain of the lacrosse team! Captain of a team for each season, in other words! Extremely popular! Genuinely well-liked, because he's an easy affable guy with a broad generous streak, but also resented by some because he can be arrogant or accidentally cruel without noticing. (Never deliberately cruel, but... teenagers.) Mediocre grades, but not godawful. Has a nerdy goth brother, and he will punch you if you say anything bad about him. Oh and also his dad is probably the principal or something.

Enjolras... is teenaged Enjolras. In a very different political setting with very different options, but the basic personality remains: intensely intelligent, intensely focused, cares SO MUCH about the causes he cares about, really does not see the point of himself having to participate in things like art class. Both his grades and his popularity with teachers are wildly uneven. Probably on the debate team and a bunch of Students For [Cause] clubs.

Cosette, uh, was homeschooled or went to an extremely strict Catholic school a few towns over, and has just transferred in. She's quiet until you give her the slightest encouragement, and then she's bubbly and friendly and generous. Teachers love her. She is about to undergo a Wow, If We Change Your Hairstyle Slightly And Give You Contacts, You're Super Pretty!!! Hollywood-style makeover (this is basically canon, thanks Victor Hugo), after which she will win the heart of hot nerd Marius Pontmercy, and become Homecoming Queen. Much to Marius's bewilderment, since he thought he was living in a different genre.

Kazul is the history teacher turned principal.

Not, however, of Thor's school.

[harryhotspur]

i don't even know which of these i love most

[never_promised]

Well, years ago in a game that was sort of an AU spin-off of things, Djehuty was a dedicated but flaky stoner hippie art teacher. One of the art projects was painting his decrepit VW bus.

Lesgle is one of the kids that runs the Super Secret Illegal Unofficial Naughty Counterculture Student Newspaper. He's probably also writing for the regular old official student newspaper, too, mind. And he's on the debate team. He's kind of all over the place in terms of his grades and his focus--literally all over the place too, skipping classes and then skipping more classes.

Feuilly is a history teacher. Yeah, some kids make fun of him because he's so obviously excited about his subject and you can always get him to go off on half-hour tangents by asking about Polish history, but he's pretty well liked all around--he's kind, he sponsors more than one student club, he's really trusting.

Gredya is a scary weird student who probably transferred in just this semester from Belarus. Everyone jokes about how she could probably kill someone but they also kind of think it's true.

Helen Ramirez is known all around school for having been dating that one guy, and then dating his enemy after the first guy got expelled, and now she's secretly dating the second guy's friend, and oh my god the first guy is coming back to the school now did you hear??? what's going to happen??? (If you ever manage to talk to her it turns out she's really smart and so fucking tired of this school. She finds some way to graduate half a term early and goes off to some cool university on the other side of the country.)

Hal is the state governor's son. He should be in private school but after being kicked out of them all he's in public school now. He smokes in the parking lot and shoplifts from the convenience store and everyone knows it but he gets away with it. Eventually he tells his friends to piss off and vanishes into Harvard or Yale.

[genarti]

oh god I'm picturing High School AU Enjolras's college admissions essays, assuming he applies to college. "Write about someone who has inspired y--" "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MR. FEUILLY THE ENGLISH TEACHER AND WHAT HE HAS TAUGHT ME ABOUT INJUSTICE IN THE WORLD"

(Also I love all of these)

[onceaviking]

Hmm ...

Eric could be the hot and very European exchange student? (And by European, I mostly mean naked). Automatically considered a jock until he shows his soft side by reciting poetry at someone?

(I'm not particularly well-versed in High School tropes ...)

Elrond would either be a long suffering head master or perhaps teaching English Litt. He'd be very private (due to the loss of his wife that still haunts him), but kind and encouraging to interested students.

[yinyangwizard]

Since I have only one pup, I will do both student and teacher versions of him. This is also a good approach for describing him at different stages of his life (mortal and subsequently immortal).

As a student:

Faculty opinions of young Mr. Abe are sharply divided. Some teachers consider him a delight and an excellent student because he brings a lot of energy to class and really engages with the material. More authoritarian teachers (like the P.E. coach) are irritated by him and may even consider him a menace. His grades are all over the map.

Most of the other students consider him a geek, although he hangs out with the Goths and band/theater folks. He has a reputation for mercilessly pranking anyone who bullies him or other kids, so unpleasant members of the student body tend to leave him alone. He has been going steady with one of the popular girls since sophomore year.

As a teacher:

Mr. Abe tends to teach the humanities courses (literature, English, history, anthropology, etc.) and occasionally art classes. Students who are coasting through and expect any of his courses to be an easy A will be sorely disappointed. Overachiever types will find themselves challenged in a way that may make them uncomfortable. Shy kids are at first mortified when he calls on them, but by the end of the semester they have come out of their shells.

In class he favors the Socratic method and unusual assignments that really help kids engage with the material. One standout example is having students re-enact scenes from Shakespeare in the form of rap battles.

Mr. Abe makes a particular effort to reach out to troubled kids, misfits, and burnouts - kids other teachers might overlook or consider to be lost causes. He does not succeed with all of them, but many of those 'lost cause' kids will - in later years - remember him as a teacher who inspired them, or a mentor who helped them turn their lives around.

He once decked the abusive father of a student in the parking lot and got arrested (fortunately not convicted) for assault - an incident that is now the stuff of school legend.

[i_am_your_host]

Okay, can we somehow do a Milliways High barwide plot, please. The bar is one big high school and everyone are students and faculty.

[never_promised]

PLEASE PLEASE YES?

[have_no_mercy]

Tess is the young, new biology teacher who's really passionate about the environment and tries to get the kids involved in Issues.

Kylo is the tall, skinny, sullen kid who sits in the back of the class and doesn't talk to anyone. There's a rumour he's into the occult.

[misslucyjane]

Steve is the tiny, fierce art student who does a lot of art installations about violence and politics, and stands up to the mean jocks even if it means he's getting stuffed In a locker again.

Furiosa is the scary quiet girl with a mother in a biker gang. Girls whose dates turn out too rough or demanding know they can call her for a ride home, no matter what time it is.

Sherlock is the brilliant kid who skipped a few grades and doesn't quite know how to behave around teenagers. He makes a mess of the chemistry lab on a regular basis.

Cecil does the school announcements. He's been doing it so long students think he's faculty. Faculty isn't sure what he is.

Sadie is the transfer student whose parents were ex-pats now adjusting to the States. She's counting down the days until college. She also knows if any of the urban legends around the school are true or not. She's always a hit at slumber parties.

Groot...is the tree in the quad?

[yinyangwizard]

Steve would do well in teacher!Seimei's class.

Student!Seimei would occasionally enlist Furiosa in his efforts to hardcore prank bullies, if she's up for it.

[thewidewideworld]

Sinric would be the lovely, sad waif of an exchange student who makes friends easily but rarely stays with any group of people long.

Or as a substitute teacher who comes and goes. Who puts up with the kids' teasing and becomes a quick favourite because of his unusual and unorthodox field trips.

Jay is the shop teacher who quietly awards extra points for interestingly dangerous designs. (If the students are going to build things that go bang anyway, Jay might as well teach them how to do it safely.) But he's also the teacher who drags the abusive boyfriends back into line or has a quiet and scary word with them behind the bike sheds. Also openly bi and takes no shit from anyone over it.

As a student, he's the badboy every teacher would love to fail for being insubordinate but he's too clever and scores too highly on every exam, despite skipping class frequently. And will not join a sporting team, no matter how much the gym teachers push.

[bjornwilde]

And now I am imaging Jay having to have that quiet conversation behind the bike sheds with Rollo at least once before Rollo hooked up with Siggy.

[maid_of_tarth]

Brienne of Tarth is basically already in a very cruel high-school AU, plot-wise. She'd be overlooked by most, cruelly teased by some--though when the teasing got physical she'd fight back (and get blamed for it by the more awful teachers). One or two of the teachers would like her, and she'd have maybe one good friend, tops, plus a couple of people develop grudging respect for her once she becomes the quarterback of the football team.

...and yes, a handful of really gross and awful boys might very well bet on her virginity, and maybe one or two of them might even escalate to attempting rape.

Fantine would be from the poorer part of town, maybe in foster care. A rich older guy who's a seventh-year senior dates her and breaks her heart and...yes, probably does get her pregnant and abandon her.

Combeferre is a nerd who is the bane of some of his teachers and the delight of others because he is interested in just about everything and asks questions about just about everything. He's also on the debate club, and involved in a bunch of causes, and probably finds time to volunteer with the drama club too. He has stellar grades.

Jean Prouvaire is an artsy, poem-writing theater club person (too shy to act, but he paints scenery) with fantastic grades in art and mathematics and mediocre grades in English because the assignments are soulless and he despises them. He's also involved in student political clubs and he writes things for the student newspaper if it has a section for poems and such. Some people try to bully him, for a whole host of reasons. He is basically very quiet until they go Too Far (that line is hard to pin down) and then he goes ballistic and then he retreats into a ball of shyness again.

[death_gone_mad]

Amascut has been a senior year student since before even the oldest teachers were born and no one seems to notice. She's a jock and secretly the puppet master behind the meanest of the mean girls. Those in the know know to go to her for the dirt on everyone.

She refuses to grow up, obviously.

Fairy Fixit is such a science/engineering/technology/math teacher. Fun, but a merciless grader.

[bcgphoenix]

I am so late to the game, but I can't resist. :D

Curtis is that quiet, often delinquent kid in the back of the class, the one most people give a wide berth because they're not completely sure he won't shoot up the school someday. Most of the times he's ended up in detention or suspended, though, it's because he punched out a bully trying to take some freshman kid's lunch money. (There's one freshman in particular, Edgar, that everybody knows you don't mess with unless you want Curtis's wrath to come down on you.) Everyone's baffled how, in his senior year, he ends up dating an absolutely gorgeous girl who's studying engineering at the college the next town over.

Gaeta? Captain of the math team. Hardcore member of the astronomy club; he enthusiastically organizes trips to the middle of nowhere to watch the Leonids, which end up being just him and the astronomy prof chatting in a field until 4 AM. Top of his class with a ton more book smarts than street smarts to his name. Sometime his junior year, he quietly comes out and starts dating a transfer student. When he shows up to school with a badly broken leg one day, rumors go around that it happened because he got pulled over and resisted the cops, but come on, who really believes that, right? This is Felix we're talking about.

And the new guy who hasn't been EP'd yet, Alistair, is the class clown every teacher shakes their head over because he'd do so well if he'd just apply himself. Funnily enough, he gets recruited to the JROTC early on and takes to it like a fish to water; it may be the only thing he takes seriously the entire four years he's in high school. He even ends up joining the army after graduation. There are whispers that his dad's the head of some massive Wall Street firm and Alistair's next in line for the family business, but he just rolls his eyes whenever he's asked about it.

[varadia]

X is the quiet goth loner who has the scary reputation. Maybe she's in a gang. Everyone heard she knifed a kid down behind the 7-11 once. You can see it in her eyes, man. She's a killer. Don't talk to her!

Ysalwen is the girl that is in every extracurricular ever. Science club, language club, student government, newspaper -- at least those. No one knows if she ever sleeps, and she spends her lunch hours at least some of the time doing extra labwork for credit and possibly to help the teacher test out new labs. It's fun!

Wonder Woman is president of the student council, runs at least one volunteer organization, and is the person that everyone knows and loves, and all the teachers are like 'she's going to be someone someday'. And no one minds.

Raven is the weird guidance counselor. So weird. Helpful, and all his advisees love him, but so weird.

[rudderless]

Clementine Popular, aggressive cheerleader who tries to get along with everybody and also hangs out with the stoners.

Dixie: Theater kid with more confidence than ambition; one of those kids who just has everything come to her smoothly, including a star-crossed romance with school jock-slash-all-around-good-guy Brisco.

Juliet: Perfectionist in every single way, tries to letter in everything. Is on every single homecoming committee every year.

Pinkie: Her canon AU where she's a human who loves parties and planning everything isn't far from how I'd envision her, TBH.

Eponine: The third wheel to Marius and Cosette's nerdy boy/cool girl romance. Ends up getting Duckie Daled. Moves smoothly among the middle clique strata and knows almost everyone and everything but wants to be popular and fails at it. Theatre kid. A little melodramatic.