Survival Of The Fittest

Cody held Cynthia's paper in his hand, but didn't look at it yet. He traced a line between the four of them, trying to get it down pat just who would be getting whose paper. If he was getting Cynthia's, Cynthia was getting Sophie's, Sophie was getting Hiro's, Hiro was getting...

Oh hell.

He stared down at the paper on his desk, almost completely ignoring the one in his hand for the time being. Cody was a guy without much of a creative edge to him. He thought back to the night spent at his desk trying to think of what to type up for a story, when nothing came. Instead of dreaming up something entirely fictional, Cody did the next best thing, as well as the only thing he could think of, and wrote a story about a crab fisherman. The tale was simple, and not really full of any of those 'themes' that the teacher went on about. Cody was pretty sure it wasn't full of them, anyway.

Given that the fisherman was based on his father though, and that he was trying to get back to his family which was a loose representation of his own, the story held some personal attachment to him. He didn't like his writing being judged to being with, and he realized he liked the prospects even less when it was something that was personal to him. All of a sudden, he became even less fond of the thought of having to work in a group with Hiro.

And then, with great irritation, the two points of this assignment being mandatory and that he couldn't put on a scene lest he hurt his image crossed into his head.

Cody nudged the paper towards Hiro wordlessly, placing his thumb under the first page of Cynthia's work to begin reading.  He couldn't say that it was 'bad', exactly, but he wasn't really into the subject material of romance or whatever. He continued reading, occasionally looking up at Cynthia... more notably, her eyes.

... I'm going, I'm going. Just give me a sec...

Cynthia had to suppress a smile as she realized what sort of mischief she had wrought. Purely a coincidence, of course, but as fate would have it, Cody would be receiving criticism from the girl he'd badmouthed in the hallway. Not that much would probably come of it. Hiro didn't seem the sort to be vindictive about things like this, and it would, no doubt, not affect her judgement in the slightest.

Now then, to the matter of her own paper. As Sophie explained that her work was fantasy, Cynthia immediately had high hopes for it. Even if most people would consider it geeky, Cynthia actually did enjoy reading fantasy works, particularly those dealing with the more political end of things. And so it was that she started reading over Sophie's story and began analyzing the story, hoping for some hijinks involving backstabbing lords and kings and such.

"Okie dokie," she said, still thumbing through the pages, "seems like spelling and grammar are fine. Your paragraph spacing is okay, and...Wow! Those are some interesting names." One thing that had become immediately clear was that Sophie had herself a bit of an imagination. If Cynthia had written this work, she'd have probably named the protagonist Bruce or something similar, but that'd be just too mundane. These names were not only unique but quite creative.

"So how do you think up these names, Sophie?" Cynthia asked out of curiosity. "They're better than anything I could ever think of."

Sophie took the story from Hiro and began to read through it. Looks like Hiro wrote a mystery story. Sophie wasn't sure how she felt on those kinds of stories. She tended to like most stories she read, but she wasn't sure if she liked mystery or not. Sure, there were stories she enjoyed like And Then There Were None, but Sophie felt most mystery stories could get really violent and formulaic.

Still, Hiro deserved an honest review, so Sophie looked over the tale. It was then that Cynthia spoke up about Sophie's story. It looked like Sophie nailed the technical details. Cynthia was amused with the fantastic names, and asked how Sophie came up with them.

"Oh, it wasn't anything special," she said. "Lindsay, Carrie, and Laurie are the names of my sisters, although Carrie and Laurie are short for Carmilla and Laurine. Mikdee comes from my last name, McDowell. It's like how people call McDonald's Mickey D's. Stellana comes from the root 'stell', meaning 'star'. I just used 'lana' as the suffix to avoid calling her something cliched like Stella or Estelle."

"As for Cossak, I chose 'cos' from 'cosmos' and 'sak' because it sounded unpleasant. Cossak is an unpleasant guy, someone who Stellana shouldn't marry at all."

Sophie turned back to Hiro's paper.

"Hey, Hiro, I really like this story. How did you come up with such an idea for the killer?"

"Hey, Hiro, I really like this story. How did you come up with such an idea for the killer?"

Huh? Where did she get the idea? Hiro wasn't too sure, honestly. She just picked something. Though she did admit that it sounded a little bit Silence of the Lambs-ish.

"Oh...uh...n-no place in particular..." She said, reading through more of Cody's story. It was decent enough, but there seemed to be a few spelling errors that were overlooked. She COULD point them out, but then she found herself weighing the options of staying impartial and not pissing off anymore the guy who looked down on her with utter disdain.

...

...

"Uh...t-this is...g-good. But..." Hiro mumbled. "I don't think this word is spelled right. R-right here." She showed the paper to Cody and pointed out the offending word. "And here. And here."

"Alright, so..."

Cody re-read the last few lines of Cynthia's story before flipping back to the first page. He kept his eyes on the paper, figuring it might have looked a bit more professional to keep his attention focused solely on it when giving a critique. "Story's alright, I guess. Pretty down to earth, I can see somethin' like this happening." He handed it back without much else said, and wished Cynthia didn't expect him to say more. He may not have loved it, but he definitely didn't hate it. It didn't sound particularly bad. Sophie's warranted an eye roll or two with that stupid-ass names, but whatever. Let the girl be creative. He tried not to admit to himself that Hiro's paper seemed... marginally interesting.

Speaking of dipshit, she had started to give her own critique on his paper. Of course, of... fucking... course, she had to pick on the fact that everything wasn't grammatically perfect. 'Sorry', he wanted to say. 'Some of us actually go outside and spend time in that thing called the sun.' Oh, how Cody wanted to say that. He wanted to say a whole lot more than that, but alas, they were in a classroom.

"Well, damn," he said with a smug smile. "Maybe you should just become my editor then, huh?"

"That's it?"

Staring down at her paper, Cynthia felt like shoving it back at Cody and telling him to try again. While she'd heard it said that no criticism was good criticism, she knew that there were things wrong with the paper in her hands, and this two-sentence review of Cody's just smacked of laziness and lack of caring. She wanted to raise her hand and have the teacher force this kid to give her a proper review, or just grab him by his collar and force him herself, but she looked around and saw all the other classmates looking over their own stories and knew that she couldn't make a scene without distracting them. And so, instead of wringing his neck, she simply sighed and shrugged. Better to just take it in stride and correct the things she knew needed correcting.

Of course, Cody had to go on further, responding to Hiro's review with smugness and arrogance. That she couldn't stomach, and with a stern look, she snapped at Cody, "Look, she's just trying to help you. Don't be so sensitive." Turning to Hiro, she added, "Need a pen?" Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a dark blue one and handed it over to Hiro. "Better mark where the errors are so he can remember them later." So far as Cody was concerned, she wasn't afraid of hurting his feelings. The guy was being a jerk across the board, and it'd do him good to realize that his work wasn't perfect.

Sophie continued reading the story in front of her when Hiro told Cody of the issues with his story. He seemed a little snippy about the criticism he got. Sophie thought it was a little rude of him. She's heard a lot of criticism from her tap classes, and she learned that the best way to deal with criticism was to improve in a way that no one would ever say it again. If someone didn't like her technique, she would work hard to avoid that criticism.

Cynthia didn't seem pleased with that response either. She was already standing up for Hiro, even giving her a pen to mark his paper up with.

"Cody, it's not that big a deal," she said. "It sounded like her only criticism was spelling. I figure Hiro probably didn't have any story issues. Did you run the essay through a spell-check program?"

Hiro couldn't help but wince at Cody's biting reply.  But it was right, though. There WERE a few spelling errors here and there that could be corrected. Sophie and Cynthia seemed to agree, too, though Hiro had the suspicion that everyone ganging up on Cody would just make things worse.

"Oh, uh...okay." Hiro said as she was handed the pen, marking down the mispellings. She didn't remember what the proper proofreading marks were, so she just underlined all the offending words, pushing the story back to Cody "T-the story looks alright o-otherwise." She said, hoping that would make the situation a little better.

As much of another trial as it was to not rip the paper right out of Hiro's hand, Cody managed to pull through and simple pinched it a little as he took it from her. He even waited for her to let go entirely, which is generally more courtesy than he gave her. Said niceties might have arisen from the fact that everybody in the group had suddenly decided to act so very, incredibly, ridiculously stupid.

"Wow guys, overreact much?" he brushed off the remarks with the same grin he had always held, but inside Cody Patton was furious. Who the fuck did they think they were, getting all up in his damn business about his remarks to his paper? Cynthia might have had a hair across her ass about something, though Cody honestly couldn't finger it; he had no criticism about her paper, so what the fuck was wrong with that? If there isn't much wrong, there isn't much wrong... not that he spotted, anyway. He was almost inspired to take the paper back and nitpick every goddamn little thing he could spot, but decided against it.

Cody ran through the next few sentences he wanted to say in his head. Nothing was coming out right. He was pretty sure this was a review session and that they weren't supposed to just mark each other's papers, particularly without... you know, asking the person that the paper belonged to? If only he could take that fucking pen and shove it right up Sophie's nose until it poked her fucking brain. That was, of course, assuming there was anything to hit. Useless little bitch.

"Awesome. Pen marks on my paper. That I didn't ask for," Cody said with a sigh. "Buuuut I guess I'll at least be able to take care of the only things wrong with my paper. Cool."

'Yep, just take it Cody,' he thought to himself. 'They aren't worth your time. Don't get mad.'

((Due to Blast's Away post, I am skipping him to keep the thread moving))

"Awesome, there weren't any story issues," Sophie said, tapping her pen on Hiro's paper.

"Do you guys ever feel like you need to get the story completely settled before actually tackling issues like spelling and grammar?" she said, hoping to stir a discussion with her peer group. "Like, is that your prime concern when trying to make a story? Are plot holes a big issue, or do you think it matters more to make it readable at first?"

"Personally, I cared more about the story. I figured I could worry about spelling and grammar more when I got everything straightened out. I really had to explain how the McDowell sisters could help Stellana before I bothered to realize that I continued to mix up my 'theirs' and 'there's'."

God, I hope that doesn't make me sound too stupid.

Sophie's eye then caught something on the paper.

"Hey Hiro, didn't this guy take his hat off in the last paragraph? You said he tipped the brim of his hat when it should be on the hat rack. Let me mark that so you can fix that."

Sophie proceeded to write "WHERE DID THE HAT COME FROM???" on Hiro's paper. Red pen made things all the more apparent for revision.

No story issues? Well, that's good. Spelling and grammatical issues were pretty easy to fix, but story issues tended to be a little trickier. And at least Cody seemed to be taking his own spelling issues better.

Huh? Sophie started to talk about whether story issues were more important than spelling and grammatical issues.

"Uh...yeah, I guess." She said after Sophie said her piece. Spelling errors didn't really seem as important if there was a huge glaring plot hole to attend to as well.

Uh oh, speaking of.

"R-really?" Hiro responded, worrying she'd have to make some pretty big revisions, but soon she relaxed when she remembered the passage in question, and realized that it wouldn't really take more than fixing a sentence. That's not so bad.

"Obviously," Cody muttered, putting his paper back in order and turning it over as to not have to stare at those stupid red marks again. "These are drafts, anyway. The whole point's to get the story in order. Shit like spelling and grammar gets corrected later." That reminded him. He needed to take this back home, use the damn marks to fix what errors were pointed out (spellcheck was only good for so much, after all), reprint the whole thing and make it look clean.

Cody looked at the clock and prayed for that minute hand to sweep around just a little more. Hiro's stuttering attempts to make herself seem cute were really getting to him. Probably saw that on one of her japanese cartoons. Those shows were full of that, right? That was the impression he got from the couple of conversations he had been forced to overhear at the lunch table. Ha... those were good times, actually. He would just lead the football team in a loud discussion of something better, like who was going to make the playoffs. That'd drown the geeks out.

His mind drifted back to the less happy subject of the paper. He figured he could get it out of the way after practice. Eliza was, with any luck, going to be hanging out with those loser friends of hers, leaving the computer free.

And then class ended and Hiro left.

{{continued in Getting Prom Dates Over The Internet For Fun and Profit}}

Sophie left class, happy about how everything had gone.

((Sophie McDowell continued in The King of Limbs))

Cody sighed, shook his head, and walked out of class with everybody else. That class dragged on for far too long.

((Cody Patton, continued elsewhere))