Survival Of The Fittest

It was a bright and sunny day in the mystical land of Cochise High School. The sun was shining, the birds were tweeting, there were no butts in sight, and if you looked hard enough you could probably see a couple little kids play with their toys in the background or something. The heat wasn't too bad, normally the heat here felt so intense that you felt like you'd collapse from dehydration if you stayed outside too long, but there was a decent enough wind which counteracted against the heat and made it possible to go outside. By all standards, this was a pretty good day.

Not that Jeremy would know about that, considering that he was stuck inside.

((Jeremy Frasier continued from For the people all said "Sit down, sit down you're rocking the boat"))

To be fair, Jeremy liked English. Sure, it wasn't the easiest class ever, but the stuff they had to study was pretty interesting and he was good enough at bullshitting meaning out of nothing to do good at the class. That helped a lot when studying Hamlet, considering the language barrier between the text and actual english and how there seemed to be nothing in the text. Honestly he hadn't learned a lot during this unit, except for the fact that revenge apparently isn't that great of an idea and stuff about the dutch royalty that they covered for an entire lesson.

Class hadn't actually started yet, for some reason. Mrs Webber had to go outside the classroom to do something teacher related and no work was assigned to them. He checked his watch, it had been a good five minutes since she had left the class. That probably meant that she was going to take a couple minutes more, considering past incidents.

Oh well, that meant less Hamlet, at least. Jeremy reached into his bag, pulling a notepad out. May as well do some writing considering the opportunity.

(Adelaide Walker continued from Diaries)

Adelaide sighed, inching her head forward as she sat at her desk to try and get a better view  to see if Mrs. Webber had returned. No sign of her. Though an absent teacher should have been a good opportunity for most students, there was really nothing they could do. Despite not knowing when, if Adelaide just left her spot she would be marked absent, or caught by halls security for being out of class for no reason.

She leaned back to her regular position, looking down at the play in front of her. Hamlet, a predictable choice from Shakespeare. The English playwright was popular for a reason, but she wondered what went through someone's head to think of a play, made up of foreign characters, with a majority of the named cast dying by the end, being seen as a success. The class had not gotten very far yet in analysis, so perhaps she was missing why it could strike a cord with people. Besides the revenge and bloodshed, there was nothing particularly likable about the characters the participated in those events. Perhaps it was a mistake to the higher level English course this year, if it was so difficult for her to grasp.

She looked around, her eyes settling on Jeremy Frasier. Another reason why she regretted her placement choice. Jeremy was... an unpleasant person to be around. Whenever they talked, Adelaide found even more about him that rubbed her the wrong way. Part of her wanted to ask what he was writing, just to provoke him. That could be a way to ease the tedium of waiting for Mrs. Webber to come back to Denmark, figuratively. Her hand flipped through the pages of the play instead, trying to better understand the barrage of footnotes that scatter the pages and mumbled lines under her breath, loud enough for others to hear her. Other people in the class had begun to talk, so it shouldn't have be a big deal.

• okay, so this dude gets shot up for some reason and is left for dead
• but there's this super cool roboticist dude who repairs his body and replaces part of it with machine parts
• super cool roboticist turns him into a super fighting robot and the dude decides to fight crime and be like this cowboy vigilante dude
• plot might be a bit too similar to robocop? note to self: check out the plot of robocop and see if its too similar

Okay, the idea was written down. Now to figure out how he was going to use this. He knew that this was going to be a little bit stylish, something that was willing to be unrealistic (well, as unrealistic a story about a robot vigilante can be) if it made a scene look cool or made a character look badass. An minor issue that'd need tweaking would be the hero's home life, where are his parents during all this? An obvious solution would be to make the hero an orphan but ugh, the hero being an orphan was a cliché that appeared in like every edgy teenage boy YA book and he didn't want his work to be clichéd. At least then it'd be better than that book he read recently, Thirteen, good lord was that book a pile of shit.

Looking at it, though; maybe the story wouldn't fit as well in a written format than at first thought. This was a little bit more of a visual story, something that'd fit better as a TV show or a video game. Something that would have to wait until he became a rich and acclaimed writer. That was another reason to leave here as soon as possible, get out, get rich, and give this story life.

Still, he could use the concept of a vigilante hero and just make it a little less visual oriented and ooh...

• so there's this cool dude, good student, good circle of friends, his life is generally awesome right now
• except he secretly kills criminals when it rains at night, being a very well known criminal in the area
• story follows his day to day life during a certain period of time, his school life, his social life, his vigilante life
• maybe introduce a serial killer or a debating competition as a complication, can't be too formulaic

Yeah, this would definitely work. It'd be like Death Note if it didn't fall into the problems Death Note had with the uninteresting side characters and the constant mind games. The concept was interesting enough, he could motivate himself enough to write it, although it needed a little bit more fleshing out. If he wanted it to sell well it'd need to seem interesting and if he wanted the story to be good he'd need to not sacrifice anything for it.

He looked up from his notepad from a second to see the class. Still no Mrs Webber. People seemed to be fucking around for the most part, except for Mistress Adelaide who seemed to be studying. He looked down again. What could he do to make the story interesting without sacrificing quality?

He could - ooh, he could make it super deconstructive of edgy teen fiction, that

Holy shit that was a fucking fantastic idea.

He started writing in the notepad again, thoughts quickly being written down so that he could write down this story and make it a good one.

((Samuel Howard continued from Cruising and Perusing))

Whenever Samuel wasn't reading or on his phone, he daydreamed during his free time at school. In uneventful classes he'd block out the buzz of conversation and think up characters and situations, weaving together a story in his head. He'd commit it to memory and write it down once he got home, adding it to the history of his world and maybe writing a short story about it.

This is what he was doing as he waited for Mrs. Webber to come back and start class. His head was propped on his elbow and he looked vacantly out the window. It was a bright and sunny day, but the scene he was thinking of was anything but. In his mind was a dark and cold dungeon, a grizzled king leading his children deeper into the bowels of the royal castle. He shows them down steps they never heard of, which leads them into a wide cavern. Only a fraction of it is lit by the lantern their father carries, but the first thing they see is a pair of large, piercing amber eyes...

He thought the idea was clever, having a royal family's heir chosen by a wise and powerful dragon, tamed by the founder of the kingdom. It was one of the first ideas he'd come up with back in middle school, and it was something that endured years of rehauling and tweaking. Samuel was fond of the dragon (which he'd named Varjo), and it was  his favorite character among the myriad he'd made over the past few years.

He turned his head from the window to see the back of Jeremy Frasier's head. Jeremy was one of those classmates you saw in the hallway and knew by name and nothing else. He had never held a conversation with him, but from what he'd heard Jeremy was an okay guy. The girl sitting next to him, on the other hand...

((Jeremiah Larkin continued from I didn't choose the Puck life, the Puck life chose me))

Jeremiah was late. Very late. But why? Well, he didn't know yet. He had to think of an excuse. Be spontanous, Larkin.

After slowly walking towards the door for his class, Jeremiah went in and began "Apol-"

Webber wasn't here. Yesh.

Jerry then went to his seat, with the relief of not being late in class. He must've scared the other students, though, they must've thought he was Mrs. Webber. He went to his seat with a grin.

He unpacked his bag, took his English stuff out. No, he had no stuff for English in his bag. Not his book, not his noteblock. Nada.

He looked around class and set an "Yo, does anybody here have a piece of paper for me?", into the sound of students talking to each other while there's no teacher.

It was a dark and stormy night, and you

Ahahahahahaha no. Not happening. This was a deconstruction, and just using the cliches without any irony and meaning to them didn't make a deconstruction at all. Using them but having a bunch of blood and gore and death didn't make a deconstruction either; this wasn't TV Tropes after all. He needed to take the idea and actually make it into something new, then hopefully it'd be good in his and the critics eyes. He wasn't sure if second person would work either for this scene. Maybe third person would work best for what he was communicating.

Wait, what was he trying to communicate or do here in this scene? Maybe just launching into writing the story without any idea of what the general plot was going to be wasn't such a good idea after all. It was probably a good idea if he did some minor plotting before he actually went through with the story. He remembered some advice that Gloria Tesch gave in a video: if you're ever suffering from writer's block, try to plot out your entire story from beginning to end and it'll likely give you back your inspiration. Gloria Tesch was still an egotistical piece of shit who couldn't write and only got published because of rich parents who wanted to do a massive shit on every writer's way of life, but she did have a good idea on that one thing.

So he was going to make a plot outline, starting with this chapter, and oh come on did miss webber seriously just come when I was about to write somethi-

Wait nevermind it was just Jerry Larkin who was late. No real opinion on him, other than that he had the most goddamm awful name in the world which continually confused him when it was called out in class. Other than that he was probably a cool dude and he was going to go back to plotting.

So… how could he make a good beginning? It was kinda hard to go into or read a piece of writing without a good opening line. Call me Ishmael, two households both alike in dignity, it was love at first sight. Most of the good books had something that dragged the reader in, and he needed one too. Hmm…

Maybe he should go through the stormy night angle and do something different with it? Yeah, that could work. Now how to do something with it…

The rain fell down from the sky, each drop bouncing off the concrete of the city, completing the natural cycle that kept the earth living. Darkness reigned, the night stretching its reach all throughout the ci

And then Jerry interrupted him again asking for paper. That was rude. You totally don't interrupt a maestro when he's doing his work. Jeremy grinned a bit thinking that. He bagged on Gloria Tesch all the time as a bad writer with an ego the size of the moon but if he actually believed those that he was a maestro of writing or something unironically he'd have an ego the same size of tesch, which wasn't a goo thing at all.

Jerry still wanted paper though, so it was probably a good idea to help him out. Out of kindness, not to shut him up or anything. He tore a page out of his notebook and gave it to Jerry, bending himself on the chair so that he was looking at Jerry upside down.

"Here you go."

He went back to sitting position and was about to go back to writing, but for whatever reason the page he was writing on wasn't there.

…

Whoops.

He'd gone back to daydreaming when the sound of the door opening snapped him out of his reverie. He bent down to get his stuff out for class before realizing it was a false alarm: it was just some guy who ran late to class and was lucky to come in when she wasn't here. He didn't know the boy that well. He knew that Jerry was a junior and sat near him, but that was it.

Samuel straightened up and leaned back in his seat, stretching. He glanced out the window and tried to fall back into his daydream, but Jerry loudly asked for a piece of paper. He watched Jeremy lean over and hand him a piece, but Samuel could see some writing on it.

Jeez, Jeremy...

Oh Jeremy, funny guy, who managed to give Jerry some good laughs, but also a pretty nice guy, as he gave him a sheet of paper.

"Thanks, dude!"

Jerry took it and put it on his table. Oh, there were writings on it. Jerry read it. It was probably notes on Hamlet.

Robots, dead people and vigilantes. The plot of Hamlet. Or not. Jerry knew that Hamlet was about something else. He read about it on wikipedia. Man, he should finish reading Hamlet for class, but goddamn, the language was terrible.

Oh, Jeremy just gave him another good laugh. Jerry had to laugh out loud when he read the introduction sentence. That was not Shakespeare, either. It was some pseudo-philosophical sentence that was there to brag about the writing skills the writer has. Man, why can't literature be more simple? If people want to flex so badly about their writing skills, they should rap, not write boring books. Rap's more interesting and more worth listening to. But, whatever. If Jeremy likes to write, he should write.

Better give it back. He turned back to Jeremy and showed him the paper, pointing on the scribbled stuff on there.

"What's that?"

He had a big grin.

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

Jerry had the paper with all of Jeremy's writing on it. That wasn't good. That wasn't good at all. A writer never showed their craft to other people, at least, not the very first draft. That was a fundamental part of the writers code. Or at least, the writer's code that Jeremy had made up just then. It was the first draft of the thing and he hadn't waited two months to even look over it yet. Who knows how bad it could be? He needed to get the piece of paper back from Jerry. At any cost. He would kill if he had to. Wait, no he wouldn't. A couple of sentences wasn't worth killing someone over, even if Jerry ripped the paper up he could just try to write it again, that was no real biggie. He remembered a Stephen King book where there was a dude who legit killed another dude because he wanted to read a book by a Stephen king expy. He had never read the book, but that plot was silly enough to be remembered here and now.

Wait. You're getting distracted, Jeremy.You can't get distracted, you have to get the piece of paper back from Jerry.

But how to do so? He would need to smooth talk his way into getting the paper back, probably. Ask "Hey, uh, that piece of paper has some super private stuff on it and I'd appreciate it if you gave it back to me." But wait, then he would just read it out loud to the class, wasn't that what happened in the movies? Shy teenage girl has this SUPER SECRET SECRET that she has and then the bitchy alpha cheerleader goes and reads it in front of the class and then she gets super depressed and stuff. No, doing that wasn't a good idea. Maybe he just needed to be more subtle about it. Maybe he should say "hey, uh, that has some writing on it, wanna switch with an actual clean note and be super cool bros and stuff?" Yeah, that might work. He would just need to do it in a way that was subtle and nicely acted. Otherwise Jerry would catch on and then become a bitchy alpha cheerleader.

Maybe he needed to- oh Jerry just gave the paper back to him. Okay then.

That was cool. Although it seemed that Jerry read it, which sucked. He kinda had a massively smug look on his face that said that he read it. He also commented on it too, which confirmed Jeremy's suspicions. That evil man. That fucking bitch. He would have to go down to the dungeons and spend the rest of his life RUING the day where he decided to accidently read Jeremy Frasier's work by accident since it was on the paper.

He may as well get some writing critique out of it, though.

"Whoops, gave you the piece of paper with something I was writing on it." He shrugged, getting another piece of paper from his notebook so he could tear it off, giving it to Jerry as a trade.

"Was it good?"

"Writing, huh?"

Samuel didn't know Jeremy was a writer. Well, he didn't know anything about him, but nonetheless it was news to him. Part of Samuel was curious about what he was writing; writing didn't exist in a vacuum, after all, and it had to be shared one way or another. He leaned forward on his desk, propping his head up on his elbows. "What's it about?"

He didn't usually chime in like this, but his interest was piqued.

(Sorry, going out of order to get back into the thread.)

Adelaide looked up from her studying. apparently Jeremy had been in at work wordsmithing so diligently that he had given Jerry the piece of paper he had been writing on. She did not expect greatness coming from the boy's brain. He was the type that was filled with so many quotes and references that it would be hard to find something original from him. Then again, Shakespeare was a bit of a poser himself, judging how he got the basis of Hamlet from other stories. Yet, his works would be the ones that are remembered most. Maybe Jeremy would get lucky.

"Oh, what's it about?" Adelaide decided to speak up, she wanted to see where this conversation would go. Maybe Mr. Frasier would prove her wrong for once in the time they have known each other.

Jeremy asked Jerry what his opinion on the writing was. He had no idea what to say.

"Yeah, it was good!"

He had no clue why it was good, hopefully Jerry had not to justify his thesis on Jeremy's writing.

Luckily, Jeremy gave Jerry a new piece of paper, Jeremiah put onto his table. Looking into his bag, Jerry realised something.

"Uh, does anybody have a pen for me?"

And then everybody suddenly got interested in what Jeremy was writing. And now things were super awkward for him, yayyyyyyy. Jeremy didn't really like showing things off if they weren't finished yet, and his writing was definitely not an exception to this. There was something that would just be… lost if there wasn't a conclusion to the story. There were movies he remembered watching where there outright wasn't an ending at all. It'd just be in the middle of a scene and then BAM credits. Kinda left him feeling robbed, really.

It was only really a couple of sentences though, and it was only like, scene setting and stuff. He doubted that a reader could gain a connection to the story with just that, so it'd be fine. Wait, no, it wouldn't. That was probably worse. It was a total lose-lose situation.

Anyway, the two people who Jeremy attracted the attention of were Samuel Howard and Mistress Adelaide. Samuel was a quiet dude, and Jeremy didn't know what he did. He didn't seem to be an asshole though, and he was friends with Harold, so he couldn't be too bad. Adelaide, however, was somebody that Jeremy hated even more the more he had to be near her. Always thought that she was higher than everybody else. He kinda hated his seating arrangement because of that; apparently Miss Webber thought it was a good idea that the two students who openly hated one another should sit next to each other.

Not so great an audience, but an audience nonetheless. He picked up the paper, swinging it around so that they could both see the writing, even though at this range they likely couldn't see it. "Yeah, writing. Kinda want to be a novelist when I get out of here. Kinda going through several different concepts to see what works, this one here is about a teenage vigilante."

Oh and it seemed that Jerry wanted something to write with. Did he seriously come to school without bringing anything? Anyway, he might as well try to help to help. He clutched his pocket to see if there was any spares he had. Apparently not.

"Sorry, only brought the one I have here."

So Jeremy aspired to be an author as well. Interesting. Samuel only had a brief moment to get a good look at the paper, and all that was on it so far was several bulleted lists. Jeremy did say he was still sorting through concepts, so he might just be jotting down ideas and letting them condense into a story.

Jeremy had given them a bare-bones description of the story. Harry Potter could also be summarized as "a kid goes to a magic school," but it was just so much more than that. But at the stage Jeremy was in, it might not be anything past that.

But it didn't hurt to ask.

Samuel nodded. "Sounds interesting. You got anything past that?" he asked. Jerry asked for a pen, and Jeremy didn't have anything. Samuel sighed, reached down into his backpack and fished out a blue ballpoint he kept on him.

"Here you go"

A teenage vigilante? Really?

Adelaide sighed. So much for Mr. Frasier rising above her expectations. It basis itself was cliche, and from the sound of it he had no idea where his story was going beyond that. It sounded like a fantasy he had wrote up and was attempting to make a reality. He was probably thinking he was clever and original, despite much of popular modern media focusing on teenagers who went against The Man.

She looked over at Jerry and also felt herself grow more and more unimpressed with her classmates. People who forgot to bring the basic tools of the classroom and relied on someone else to cover them were just irritating. she half hoped Samuel would not give him the pen. Have him learn the lesson so he wouldn't come to class unprepared again.

"Anything else in your blue prints?" Adelaide directed her focus back on Jeremy, less of actually wondering what the boy had thought up and more of a challenge to see if he would take the bait. It could help mend the ennui she was feeling.