rakuen | [Round 3, Day 5] another brick in the wall [OPEN//CLASSROOM]

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[Round 3, Day 5] another brick in the wall [OPEN//CLASSROOM]

Characters: EVERYONE
Format: ACTION/PROSE/IAMBIC PENTAMETER/LIMERICK
This log is: open
Location: Classroom D7
Summary: It's politics class! Today we're having group discussions about the disadvantages of constitutional monarchy. Or what you're having for lunch, either one.
Warnings: to be added

[your teacher is sitting at the desk, marking your homework from the previous week. There aren't many sheets in front of her, mainly because very few students actually bothered to hand in any work. She doesn't seem entirely worried by this, and will only look up if someone makes a wide movement or voices get too raised.

The tables seat six apiece and are scattered around the room with enough space to walk between them easily. There are textbooks and notes on every table relevant to the debate, although the information tends to vary wildly on what world and timeline it's purportedly from.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[oh hell what is this even... Sora is just staring down at an open textbook, in case answers leap off the page and do an elaborate interpretive dance in front of her

Nope, no answers.]

But... I thought it was a good system?

Good? Well... [Grenn pauses and frowns, then shrugs.] Suppose that depends on what you mean with 'good', Sora.

[Grenn was biting her tongue to not go into a snappy rant about politics and politicans and wealth. Sora looked confused enough.]

Ah, good because... it works...? [DID I SAY SOMETHING WRONG, GRENN?]

[Leaning forward to lean her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, Grenn grimaces.]

I suppose it does. But despotism always works until they either go bad, or someone decides they don't want the ruler there. [A few of her fingers grabs the hair she can feel brushing them and gently tugs.]

I mean, you can say any given system works, you know. Until people start to suffer. [Grenn glances up at Sora from under her lashes where she's been staring at the table. She's not exactly sure what she want to say, mostly because Sora seems to not have thought about this at all, and is just (adorably) confused...]

Despotism? Is that really a word?

[lost in a sea of big words, here. Help. She grasps onto something easier.]

But then you just tell the ruler what they're doing wrong. When they see that they're making people suffer, they'd have to change.

Um... yes. [Grenn has to supress a giggle, but manages to swallow it completely and just nods.] We could find a dictionary if you want to check.

[Then Sora continues on, and Grenn makes abstract figures on the table. Abstract figures she soon realizes would form the shape of the mining drone suits and the huge mining ships that once upon a time was the chosen (available) weapons for effective air and ground battle for people who had been opressed too long.]

Some people enjoy watching others suffer, Sora. Other people just don't care, just want to live their life as they want it to be, no matter who they hurt. [Grenn shrugs, but bites her lip, wondering if it's really the time and place to say things like this. Does Sora really need to know?

Grenn isn't sure why she's hesitant over this, but it's just... something. She's vaguely frustrated that someone could actually be this... innocent? idealistic? But at the same time, why the frag not?]

Everyone can change, Grenn. They just need help sometimes.

[or sometimes you need to beat them up until they see your point.

OVERWHELMING IDEALISM HI]

Well, yeah. I just think it becomes a problem when thousands or millions of people have to die to make those changes... [Grenn grimaced and shook her head, rather sure this was safe to say; people had rebelled through the ages due to bad government or social situations, people died for these things.

That just never changed.

But also, that didn't mean any new government installed after rebelling was good, or stayed good.]

Do ya know? Do ya know?

There once was a prince saving princesses
found by one and all most impressive
but his sister, a witchling
could not do the "saved" thing
so instead he indulged in his excesses

the young witchling he put to the test
with her powers he controlled the rest
made a duelling arena
and held forth from his beamer
and at night there was fear and incest

seeing this, a young girl in a rage
vowed to break the witchling from her cage
witch's prince she'd become
sword gleaming like the sun
but alas, just a blade through her ribcage

And that's what happened! Did ya know? Did ya know?

Utena looked pale through the whole discussion. Unpleasant, half remembered, half mythical memories were stirring and bubbling within her.

"Nobles...can become corrupt. Then...bad things happen."

"Doesn't the ruler stop that?"

"Sometimes" roses "the ruler" a car "is the most" tuna fish sandwiches "corrupt" so many roses "of them all."

Utena almost shook as she forced the words out.

"But..." Sora frowned down at the text, several half-baked impressions going through her mind. Kings and queens were good, right? They always were in the stories. She looked back at Utena and started: the other girl looked ill. And her shaking meant that she got Sora's hand over hers on the table.

"Utena, what's wrong?"

Utena could barely feel her hand. It was from a world she was only partially present in. Her eyes looked very far away. "Sora...You shouldn't trust princes and princesses...You're too noble...they'll...I saw the first prince...He had become..."

And then she made a low sound of pain and clutched at a spot on her stomach, between two ribs. She toppled from her chair, unconscious but with her hand still over the spot, which corresponded to the patched and sewn together part of her uniform.

"Utena!" The sudden collapse had her scrambling too late to catch her friend, so she had to content herself with pulling her head and shoulders onto her folded legs to hold her close.

"Miss, over he--" but the teacher had already stood up, walking over with a crisp step.

"The infirmary, I feel," she said, calm and straight-faced. "If we could have some volunteers to take Ms. Tenjou there?"

Grenn was idly persuing the different books and notes, interested more in the differences between the various places and times the information's taken from, than what they're really discussing.

All political system have their disadvantages, and the only thing common to all were (no matter the purported difference or reason or whatever) was that the privileged, the rich, got to do what they wanted, how they wanted to, to those less priviledged.

Unfortunately, society was quite necessary, as far as Grenn was concerned, so there wasn't much to do about it, on the whole. So she tried to keep her mind clear from any negativity, and just be entertained by what information she could pick up about other worlds. It wouldn't be useful for when she returned home, but it sure was interesting.

Romeo kicked his feet in the air, the chairs in the classroom were too high for him and he looked around for someone he knew. Because when it came down to it Romeo had no idea what a consitutional monarchy was. Of course he could pick up some of the textbooks around him but he had forgotten how to read.

It made classes difficult but Romeo was determined to do his best and since they were allowed to discuss this subject he could just ask. He spotted Grenn and he grinned edging closer to her. Grenn was really clever and she had been nice to him when they had explored the towers, something that Romeo did at least once a day, but nothing had changed.

"Hello miss Grenn! What's a consitutional monarchy?"

Grenn jerked up from where she'd been bent over a book and looked down at Romeo, for a full minute lost. It took even longer than that to find some sort of words to reply.

"Oh, um... It's... When a... country has one family as its rulers, where the oldest child becomes the ruler after their parent." Grenn didn't mention the various possibilities of old, where it was most often the man who was the ruler, and it was his oldest son (no matter if daughters had been born first) that inherited.

There were variations, after all, and she was most used to the more 'gender neutral' one.

Romeo blinked up at Grenn and smiled, his smile held a little bit of confusion though. "Oh like the king? I knew that!" He said, not in an accusing way but a cheary way glad he had remembered something that doctor Casella had taught him. "Italy's like that! So is France!" He paused and frowned a moment.

"Wait isn't everywhere like that?" Everywhere in Europe anyways, "Is it like that in India? Why are there disadvantages? If you don't have a king who is gonna rule?"

She had no idea when or where Romeo was from... Grenn shook her head slowly and traced the title letters on one of the books.

"Not everywhere is like that, no. But there are other ways to rule than having a king; a monarch is usually not chosen, but there's systems where the people choose the... 'ruler' instead," Grenn said, aware that a president or whatever wasn't exactly a ruler, but with Romeo's apparent frame of reference, she probably couldn't toss around 'head of state', 'president' or other such words.

"People like power. And if they're not decent, they'll abuse that power." Of course, even 'decent' people could abuse power, and make things miserable for others, but it was simpler to say it this way.

"Other ways to rule?" That sounded like something Alfredo would have said, he always spoke of things being different, things from the books he read. "So people chose who they want to rule? And it can be anyone?" That sounded like a strange system, because surely the king was chosen by God to rule? That's what the priest in church had said anyways. Romeo sighed.

"Oh you mean bad people like Napoleon?" Alfredo had taught him about Napoleon, he had had a lot of power and used it to invade different countries. "Well people just have to pick nice people to rule right?"

This felt strangely like parts of the conversation she'd had with Sora. Shaking her head, Grenn tapped a finger against one of the books.

"Well, you could hope so. But it's not hard to pretend to be nice, and even those who may start out 'nice' can end up bad," Grenn said with a sigh and a shrug. She wasn't equipped to discuss politics and the state of society with idealists and (idealistic) children...

"Oh," Romeo frowned, he didn't like the sound of that. That people could pretend to be nice but were really not. Anyways everyone he had ever met had niceness in them somewhere. Even when they were cruel and mean there was goodness in them and it didn't take much to make them realise that. Even the god of death, even Luini, he had some niceness in him.

"Sometimes people are bad, and do bad things but everyone has niceness in them, sometimes it's just really deap down. So maybe we just have to make sure that rulers know that there is niceness inside them."

Grenn felt something twitch, somewhere, but managed a smile and a nod, if slightly vauge. Others might have taken it upon them to try and educate both Romeo and Sora, but Grenn didn't feel she was the right person for that.

Better to keep quiet, since she wasn't sure she had the right words to explain.

"Ummm, yes, I'm sure," Grenn nodded with all the agreement she could muster, and wondered why the classes were so mixed, considering at least some of the children here would hardly have the correct frame of reference to use...

Romeo smiled and nodded, he was sure that as long as good people ruled then everything would be alright. "The king of Italy is nice anyways," he said with a smile. "Alfredo met him once."

Miwako came from a constitutional monarchy, and she'd never seen any problems with the system. She sat listening to the discussions, unsure of how to participate.

As the debate went on, Lelouch remained silent. But that didn't stop him from expressing a bit of an arrogant chuckle at the efforts of some of the others. No one in this room had any clue what they were talking about.

When the boy sitting near her chuckled, Miwako glanced at him curiously. Was he knowledgeable about the subject? Or was he just a jerk? She didn't know how to ask.

"Is something amusing?" Gaara had been quiet until this point, listening to the other students in an effort to understand more about their various countries and worlds, but the behaviour of the dark-haired boy on his own table was disturbingly familiar. The laughter sounded almost exactly like a certain Uchiha.

Suzaku had been mostly ignoring the debate, mainly because he didn't know what a consititutional monarchy was, reading the textbooks he managed to understand that it was a monarchy with a figure head who was not the sole law giver. It sounded like a mix between a government and a monarchy.

He looked up though when the red haired boy sat on their table spoke to Lelouch, wondering if there was going to be trouble.

~~Other than that kanji on your head?~~ "No. Not particularly," he replied coolly. "Though I'm sure no one else in this room has any experience with an absolute monarchy to even begin to compare."

Miwako glanced from the laughing boy to the red-haired boy, and then to the brown-haired boy. There was talking now. She hoped they weren't about to fight, so she jumped in to keep it from happening.

"What do you mean 'no one else'?"

"Absolute power isn't the only alternative," he pointed out, expression as unreadable as always. "Rulers should be judged for their individual actions and decisions, rather than as a single system. Many of us live in worlds under a constitutional monarchy, but we all have different experiences."

"I don't get it," a voice said softly. Mikoto had showed up to class on Gaara's behalf... actually she had been following him ~~like a good little sister~~ and realized he was going to class. There was nothing wrong with this. Mikoto used to go to classes before, but she usually went seeing it was Mai's encouragement.

And this lesson was too complicated. She really didn't understand any of it. But she nodded at Gaara's comment, seemingly agreeing with him.

Suzaku listened silently, he nodded kindly to the other girl who he had not noticed before looking back at the strange boy with the red hair and darkened eyes, the girl with the blue hair and Lelouch.

"The system often effects the rulers though." His tone was polite, and he wasn't going to pretend he knew anything on the subject but in his understanding most nobles were effected by the system they lived in. Apart from Lelouch of course, and Euphemia. Euphemia hadn't been like her brother's or sister's at all.

That line of thought was not a good one and so Suzaku forced himself to concentrate on whatever everyone else had to say.

"A constitutional monarchy either props up an otherwise useless monarchy, or panders to those that oppose the will of their ruler by giving them something resembling a means to change their government, when in reality, it's those with the power that shape the country that they oversee. Not the other way around." It was definitely a viewpoint of someone that was clearly already disillusioned with what people did with power once they had it.

Looking over the textbook in front of her, Marino tried to glean something constructive to add to her table's conversation. But really, the more she read, the less it helped.

There page she was looking at for the moment was a description of all the reforms that the Vedran Empire took to become the Systems Commonwealth. But even as decent of a student as she was, all these terms and names had absolutely no meaning to her. Sani nax Rifati? That seemed to be someone's name at least, but it was utterly foreign. Perseids? That's the name of a meteor shower, sure, but it was obviously referring to something else.

Maybe a different book would be more helpful...

Rudy was having trouble adding to the conversation as well, and it wasn't just because he didn't know the first things about politics. While the topic of royalty sounded familiar, for lack of a better word, pinning a name to a face was an entirely different matter. Come to think of it, he couldn't recall the face, either. He furrowed his brow. His memory was being a little difficult, but he still knew enough to realize that forgetting this particular detail was a big deal.

Finally he just let out a nearly imperceptible sigh and absentmindedly reached for a book from the pile.

Closing the impenetrable book, Marino pushed it back to the middle of the table and reached out for a second, different one, just as Rudy also reached for it. Her hand bumped into him, surprising her.

"Oh, sorry..." she said, pulling her hand back.

That was all it took for him to snap out of his little reverie, if the slightly more surprised look was any indication. Well, a slightly more surprised look by his standards, anyway. "Don't worry about it," he said with a little sheepish smile.

His eyes drifted to the book that his hand was now resting upon, and after staring at it for a brief moment he offered it to Marino. "You can have it, if you want."

One book was just as good as any, right?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Round 3, Day 5] another brick in the wall [OPEN//CLASSROOM]

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ROOM FOR TWO MORE PEOPLE ON THIS TABLE, JUMP IN WHENEVER/WHEREVER <3

Whatever gave you that idea, Sora! Nothing wrooonngg.

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oshi

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IS THIS TOO MANY AT THIS TABLE?

NEVAR

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we can skip Suzaku, Katy's going out <3

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Since I haven't seen you on AIM, let me know if this isn't okay!

Sorry about that, I've been really busy lately. But yeah, this is totally fine!