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#another Gloam TM rant against Normal Guy hob couched in meta
landwriter · 1 year
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I just. Need to get this out of my head. We all see Hob as a university level teacher but what if he wasn't? What if he was an elementary, or even kindergarten/preschool, teacher. He didn't exactly plan to become an Offical Wrangler of 20 Human equivalent of cats, but it lets him showcase his random knowledge and get even more excited about seeing the future.
Get it outta your head, put it into mine, yes, this is the meta I welcome and adore!!! I think my views on Hob tend to run a little bit sharper and darker than the average fandom take. I've never seen him as someone whose chief trait is hope, yanno? It's hunger for me! Never thought, oh yeah, that is a labrador retriever in human form. I have never associated him with a little classroom that has posters about weather and seasons and a map of the world.
And YET. After getting this ask and thinking about it. I am fucking sold and now I will sell you all too. He would be a brilliant teacher of younger kids. Because I don't think you need to be sunny or kind or friendly to be a good teacher of small children. It’s nice. But I do believe you have to be curious. And sensitive. And patient. And those are some of the traits that characterize Hob to me.
He knows more of the variations of life than can be earned in a mortal lifetime alone. He knows loneliness. He knows losing family. He knows poverty. He knows about moving and leaving what feels like your whole life behind you, when you never wanted to go. He would inherently understand why it's better to talk about 'grownups at home' than 'parents', and why you shouldn't make kids share with the class what they did on their summer vacation. 
He is always curious - not just of the world in a way that allows him to passionately transmit that knowledge to his classes like you say OP - but also of his kids. About their dreams and hopes and fears. About how childhood has changed so much. He loves the small stuff. He wants to hear it all. A class of 20 enthusiastic kids might be like herding cats, but it’s also 20 entire lives, mornings and nights and houses and siblings and pets and chaos and weird kid observations and beliefs, and it sates Hob’s bottomless hunger for the human experience far more than a lecture hall filled with a bunch of young adults who are only there three hours a week, whose extent of conversation with him is usually limited to emails asking for paper extensions that he grants each and every time.
He also has this insane sensitivity that you see even in 1389 in the way he pulls back earnestness with humour to match the mood of the room. He is always watching, always feeling, always adjusting. Think of all the little expressions of expectation and irritation and hurt and hope when talking with Dream! I have no doubt he’d ensure each of his students felt seen and understood, even if it's hard at first. Even if it takes a long time to get there. It’s taken him a long time, after all. He is this exquisitely tuned instrument to talk carefully to kids, and to give them back tenfold the sort of validation that a part of him always howled for in those early meetings.
He's good at being earnest. He's good at big feelings. He's good at being funny. He's good at noticing. He's good at these things, in large part, because he's not normal at all.
He’s also as stubborn as a child, but as frighteningly patient as, well, an immortal. It’s probably uncanny to his colleagues. They tell Hob he’s got the patience of a saint, and he thinks, privately, More like the faith of a martyr. But he does. He’s got both.
I think he doesn't get it all right at first. But I think within ten years he’s got so many teaching awards he needs to put up a special shelf for them. Below it, though, are several shelves, already full to bursting, with letters and thank-yous and birthday cards and ‘look at me now’ life updates from former students. Because that is the kind of teacher Hob wants to be.
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