meme for @a-mag-a-day Day 144

TMA Fandom: 

-Yes, he may be terribly unqualified to be a teacher, but he is a literal encyclopedia and can/does Know everything he needs to about a given subject. Which would be great if only he could

A) Not spiral out into digressions every time someone asks a question (the students catch on quick)

B) Not throw in a bit of Terrible trivia about any given important writer/author/poet the curriculum claims he has to teach them.

“Out of the list I can spot twelve racists, three anti-Semites, five who believed women were property, three who fought to keep child slavery active, and this one married his sister. So, you know. Grain of salt with all these fine gentlemen.”

-When students and faculty inevitably broach the topic of his many, many, many scars, Jon gives up on lying—Martin made it very clear he cannot bluff an alibi to save a life (“A butterknife, Jon? Seriously?”)—and tells as much of the truth as he can. Leading to:

“So, what are all the spots?”

“Bug bites.”

“?? Bug bites don’t scar?”

“Exotic species. Work-related accident.”

“Oh. Then what about the burn?”

“Also work-related.”

“The multiple stab wounds?”

“Work.”

“…Your work as an archivist?”

“It’s a surprisingly competitive field.”

-No one can tell how old he is. He’s got a millennial face, but so much grey in his hair it’s almost white, and eyes so sunken he looks like he hasn’t slept since 2005, and he talks like he came out of a different century half the time. The older folks on staff ask how he keeps so spry, walking around in front of the room so much and not bothering with the desk chair.

“Pays to keep on your feet, just in case.”

“In case of what?”

He looks at them, unblinking. Mr. Sims never blinks.

“Work-related accidents.”

They don’t press the matter.

-The whole, ‘no one can lie or keep quiet if he asks them a question’ thing still holds. It makes for some overly honest and very interesting schooldays when you can’t BS the excuse for why your assignment is late, or whether or not you actually understand the material. Jon tries to keep it reined in; a hard task when half the job of being a teacher is engaging the class with questions. He has to speak in declarations—“Describe the use of the symbol in X,” “Compare the parallel arcs in X character’s progression versus Y.”

He keeps this up until some of his students speak with him after class, thanking him for (somehow) helping them to articulate their thoughts clearly. These are the students who usually mumble, stutter, and generally have trouble putting what the feel into coherent packages. They remind Jon of himself at that age.

He asks more questions—purely about the day’s subject—and is happy to find it’s true on all counts: Every student he asks to speak on the topic, they articulate their view beautifully. In their own voices, but universally smooth, comprehensible, and clear. The same goes for their essays and general writing assignments. As and Bs all around, including the students who usually struggled in such topics or thought themselves incapable of producing anything worth reading.

He’s both lauded and a bit envied by others in the English department.

Jon goes home beaming on days when he hands papers back.

-He can, has, and will continue to immediately walk right out of the classroom or the teacher’s lounge if he Beholds something bad happening on school grounds. Bullying? Teacher being an asshole to their class or one student in particular? Fight broke out? Some kid having a medical emergency out of sight? Something worse? Jon’s gone mid-lecture or mid-coffee, and then Jon’s there, with whatever help is needed.

People start half-jokingly theorizing that he’s psychic, ha ha.

It isn’t until after a few confrontations with students who were expelled for violence and teachers who were fired for gross misconduct (all filmed, all full of confessions Mr. Sims Archived out of them) that the joke dies. Because Mr. Sims never has to throw a punch to get these situations to defuse. He just has to Look and ask a question. Always the same question.

“How do you think they felt?”

And, according to the assorted aggressors, they suddenly Know exactly how their victims felt. One of them, an especially aggro young man, manages to pull a knife and stab him. The knife stays in his shoulder. Jon winces, but honestly, it’s nothing compared to a Slaughter blade.

“Hmm.” He plucks it out. The wound is already gone. He Looks at the young man, pocketing the blade. “This is mine now.”

The young man does not argue and does not come back after the police take him away.

No assignments ever come in late after that.

-Everyone is dumbfounded when Martin shows up one day, bringing in the satchel with all Jon’s lesson plans (and lunchtime statements) to the classroom.

“Who was that?”

“My husband.” (I imagine this taking place after they’d made things official, or at least decided to throw in one more bit of harmless bullshit on the CV)

No one can quite reconcile Mr. Jonathan ‘Cryptid in Tweed’ Sims being married to a man who looks like what would be summoned from a circle of teddy bears, knitwear, and tea kettles.

-Eventually, yes, the students do enough Google-fu to discover sizable chunks of fucked up history to do with Jon’s former life. Jurgen Leitner’s murder comes up. Jon can feel them wanting to ask about it en masse, sighs, and:

“For those of you who are curious, which is everyone in this room bar Henrietta, Maria, and Joseph, yes, I was involved in the murder investigation of Jurgen Leitner.”

“…You were really a suspect?”

“Of murdering Leitner? Yes. But I was cleared of that one.”

That one. That one.

“There were no other charges, since you’re all wondering. You’d need a body for that.”

Mr. Sims smiles at them, Eyes bright.

“I’m open to other questions.”

“…When was the Voltaire assignment due, again?”