#first few years are fun but the fourth class is when things really ramp up | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mandareeboo · 3 years

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ok now im curious what your most petty thing is (regarding the dp post)

Oooh boy, here we go! Buckle up fuckers this is gonna be a longer one.

My senior year of high school, I took a creative writing class. Partially because I needed to fill the slot, mostly because I wanted to improve my writing (spoiler: I did not). Now, my high school was a three floor building- first was mostly gym, second was general, and the third was senior lockers and art classes. I spent a good chunk of my schedule senior year on the second and third floor, going between an art class to my earth science (I took that one entirely as filler, but also bc I like science) to my locker and so on.

Creative writing? Creative writing was in the fucking basement. Go to the first floor, go to a corner generally used for health and development classes, to another corner, follow a ramp and some stairs, and boom there it is kind of basement. (Side note but this teacher was REALLY into attendance and would get you in trouble if you were late which was really annoying since basically no other class was in that part of the building).

My creative writing teacher wasn't bad, per se. I've had worse teachers. I had an algebra teacher who delighted in making freshman girls cry and mocking them for it. I had a journalism teacher who would use her class time reporting how Hilary was secretly ill during the election. I had a history teacher say trans people weren't real to an openly gender nonconforming student (I didn't know them well enough to ask for specifics on their alignment, but they were using they/them at that point) and set up assignments just to mock students on the take they were told to make. It was more that she was uncreative and took it out on the kids doing creative writing.

She gave us two books to read. Basically “how I write” by published authors. I don’t remember the first one well enough and I donated it ages ago, but the second was Stephen King’s “On Writing”. It was 3/4′s personal stories about his life and 1/4′s “also write a bit every day”. I mostly remember the first author bc she had those fake dreadlocks white people do when they destroy their hair and she gleefully told a story about making her son have a meltdown at a party or wedding or something bc he got overwhelmed and she wanted him to learn that “sometimes you don’t get what you want”. So. You know. Not much there.

She also instructed us to write in a journal every day, which she would check every few months or so. It had to be at least half a page. She would leave little comments in every one else’s journals when she checked them, but not mine- I realized pretty quickly she was a bit uncomfortable with LGBT+ content, so I made it my mission to make every journal drabble as gay as possible bc I was bored and she couldn’t mark them WRONG when she just stated we needed to write.

But it doesn’t end there! Through the entire class, we got exactly five writing projects. Stories that follow very specific guidelines that we would then read in front of the class, group proofread, and then have the teacher give final grades for. These things were approximately like a thousand words a piece, and I was writing out my 10,000 word “It Starts off Small” story in class when I got bored, so it wasn’t difficult.

Our first project was a character going through a difficult decision. Or... something? I honestly forget the criteria. Anyway, I was HYPE. I’d had this idea for a long time now a human choosing between peaceful death or reincarnation, and this gave me the push to write it! I had a whole thing planned with death being a deer and reincarnation being a wolpertinger (bc reincarnation leads to many possibilities, ed boy, so a Frankenstein bunny made sense to me). Anyway I poured my heart and soul into this bastard and, bright eyed and bushy tailed, handed it in. My classmates all thought it was pretty good. Not to toot m’own horn, but there was some pretty bad ones going in, so I thought I’d get a solid B or something.

I got a D. I guess the struggle was too metaphorical, or it didn’t perfectly fit her criteria. I was devastated. Then I was mad. Bc I was a bored senior who thought they’d made something pretty decent for this completely optional class and her refusal to see that really hurt me at sixteen (I was always a year younger than my other classmates, so despite being a senior I didn’t turn eighteen until almost a year after graduation)

Well, fuck it, I decided. I’m going to parody the shit out of this class.

Our next project was a fantasy story. I was bitter and grumpy. The other fantasy stories read aloud were stuff like “yeah this dude fought a wizard and got a girl, then they went home and banged” (this was not hyperbole, he would’ve written and read the smut if allowed, I knew him personally) and “this girl that NO ONE UNDERSTOOD was called CRAZY but this S@!$ cheerleader who Stole Her Boyfriend so she killed them all” (fun fact: the girl who wrote that was my age and a sort of half-friend from middle school. She was a yaoi fangirl who didn’t mind lesbians as long as they, you know, didn’t FLIRT with her or something.)

So I get up there. It’s the last day of presentations. And I present with a polite cheer. My story is about two magical shepherd type figures who are called Sister Brighten and Brother Dick as they chase down a werewolf who was drunk off his ass and accidentally bit someone else. They then revealed they were basically supernatural designated drivers for the whole town. I made Brighten mention that Dick’s name wasn’t even Richard. I titled it “His Favorite Brand is Grayhound”. It fit every single criteria. I got an A. I could tell she didn’t want to, because there was no comments or anything like everyone else’s, but she had to follow her own criteria.

Our third was a conjoined effort thing so I didn’t pull any fuckery there, but the fourth one was about common myths and spinning them into real or fake. One girl did the hook-handed door handle thing and the boyfriend ended up above his truck hanging (somehow???). I think someone did the age-old adage of a haunted wedding dress? I kind of read through those presentations.

Now, I’m salty-salty at this point. I wasn’t expecting His Favorite Brand is Grayhound to get me a good grade. I half-assed a lot of it. I am in full Not Happy Teenager at this point. I grab a daddy long leg and settle in.

My fourth story of the year is “Paperskin.”

Paperskin is about a boy named Billy with the thinnest skin membrane ever. Just full on body horror. You could see his teeth behind his lips. Billy gets bored one day and wanders out of his house, tries to kick a soccer ball, and breaks a leg. As he’s laying in the grass a daddy long leg bites him- and his skin is so flimsy the fangs sink in and he dies. I’m actually still pretty proud of Paperskin. It’s a horrifying, Edgar Allen Poe of a monstrosity, but it made people squirm, which was the point. The teacher is clearly a bit unnerved at this point, but she gives me another A.

I wrote a more “normal” story after that of a contentious objector forced to house kids going to see if any confirmed soldier deaths were any of their parents as my final one and I could feel her spite as she gave me a B.

So, yeah. That’s the story of when I tormented my creative writing teacher with The Gays and my weird ass sense of humor after she called one of my best works at that age a piece of shit.

Here’s a google drive of these bad boys, because yes I do still have these things. I turned these fuckers in for grades, people.

#Ask #Anon #Question Mandar #Life #Humor #Writing #I was a good kid I swear #I didn't make much noise and I didn't argue much #It was just this one lady

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