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Subject: [CWRI 101] ASSIGNMENT 1 [CLASS B]
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ALL RIGHT. LISTEN HERE. YOu’RE GOING TO DO. A PIECE OF COLLABORATIVE WRITING. 10,000 WORDS. IT IS DuE IN 3 MONTHS. AT THE END OF THE COuRSE. YOuR GROuPS ARE ASSIGNED ALREADY. NO WHINING. MY SISTER CHOSE THE PROMPT. SO IT’S SHITTY. BuT DO IT ANYWAY. AFTER 3 MONTHS YOu ARE GOING TO TRADE AND REVIEW THE WORK OF ANOTHER GROuP FROM CLASS A. AND THEY WILL DO THE SAME WITH YOuRS. GOOD LuCK, FuCKERS.
“the very essence of romance is Uncertainty.”
~ oscar wilde
GROuPS ARE LISTED BELOW.
GROuP 1
ARANEA SERKET
KANKRI VANTAS
MEENAH PEIXES
PORRIM MARYAM
GROuP 2
DIRK STRIDER
JAKE ENGLISH
JANE CROCKER
ROXY LALONDE
GROuP 3
CRONuS AMPORA
DAMARA MEGIDO
HORuSS ZAHHAK
RuFIOH NITRAM
GROuP 4
KuRLOZ MAKARA
LATuLA PYROPE
MEuLIN LEJION
MITuNA CAPTOR
NO LATE SuBMISSIONS.
CALIBORN
-
"How was your day?" Dad asks over dinner.
"Interesting," Jane replies. "Our creative writing instructor seemed... surly." That's about as polite as she can make it. Caliborn doesn't seem the type to willingly take a teaching job.
"I heard a rumor that Caliborn got this class as punishment," John says. Jane raises an eyebrow. Trust John to resolve exactly which question she'd been thinking.
"Oh?"
"Yeah! Like, Calliope wrote this really famous young adult series but have you heard of Caliborn ever writing anything? And did he ever say anything about it to you guys?"
Huh. "Come to think of it, no." That is more than a fair point.
"Yeah. So there were these rumors that he pi-" With a wince John pre-emptively cuts off his swearing and quickly follows with, "-made the university director really mad and he got stuck teaching creative writing as a punishment."
"What would he do to make the director that angry?"
"I dunno." John shrugs. "Jade thinks he set fire to the visual art studio and smashed the computer lab with a crowbar. Dave thinks he shot the performing arts professor. Rose thinks that he made inappropriate Freudian jokes to the director's girlfriend."
Thinking back on the first class of the semester, as well as the email they've received, Jane doesn't rule out that possibility. "They all sound like things he'd do."
"Oh dear," Dad says.
"So yeah, that's how classes are going!" John finishes brightly.
-
They make a plan to meet at the campus cafeteria at 3 in the afternoon. Jane's glad to see that everyone's relatively punctual at least; perhaps they can get through this assignment with minimal fuss.
Jane herself is the first there, but then again she is 20 minutes early for lack of anything else to do. Dirk is next; 15 minutes early.
"'Sup," Dirk greets as he sits down opposite of Jane. He slips out his laptop and places it on the table, flipping it open. Behind his shade his eyes immediately begin scanning whatever is on his screen.
"Hello," Jane returns.
And so they sit there in awkward silence for the next fifteen minutes. Well. Jane can at least say that Dirk is not a conversationalist. The only sounds between them are Jane's fidgeting and Dirk tapping away at the keys.
Jake and Roxy are a few minutes late, not enough to be a distraction or annoyance. Jane thinks they can make this work. This assumption will soon be shattered into tiny little pieces.
"Howdy!" Jake yells, bringing the attention of the entire cafeteria over to their little group. Roxy doesn't seem to care but Dirk looks as if he wants to sink under the table, or maybe kick Jake.
"Heeey!" Roxy sprawls in the seat right next to Dirk and rests her head on his shoulder while slinging an arm around his back. He looks vaguely disgruntled but doesn't move to dislodge her. "How's it going?"
"Fine," Jane responds politely. "And you?"
"Fucking awesome," the other girl says.
"It's very smashing to meet you all in person!" Jake plops down across from Roxy and grins at everyone. "Let's get to work on this, shall we!"
"Sure," Jane says. Jake brightens even more and picks up his laptop to place it on the table. Jane does the same, and then glances to Roxy. Who apparently handwrites. In a small ringed notebook that has a cat on the cover, and with glittery pink gel pens. All right. No problem. Jane isn't judging.
"So, where do we start?" Dirk asks, switching immediately to professional and methodical.
"Maybe we can take ten minutes to freewrite about the prompt?" Jane suggests hesitantly. "And then we can share it with everyone else and discuss where to go from there."
Nods all around. "Sounds reasonable," Dirk says.
And so they write.
Honestly, Jane feels pretty damn lost. She doesn't even know why she suggested freewriting; it just seemed like the thing to do at the start of a new project. Well, the thing other people do. Without an outline to build from, she's floundering a little. So, after typing down a rather mediocre five paragraphs, she looks up to see how everyone is doing.
Even upside-down, Roxy's handwriting looks atrocious. There are an awful lot of crossed out words and some doodles in the margins, and Roxy herself looks to be doing all right.
Dirk pauses every few seconds, staring intently at his document before resuming. Occasionally he'll let out a small curse under his breath and strike at his keys a bit more harshly than absolutely necessary, but it doesn't seem that he's really having any trouble. It does look like he's not backspacing excessively, and making progress.
And Jake is typing with his eyes shut. Just typing. His fingers fly across the keyboard so quickly that it seems that he's taking the concept of freewriting a tad too enthusiastically.
Ten minutes pass, and Jane is left looking at her Word document of inane plot musings.
"Ooh!" Roxy grins as she picks up her notebook. "Let's read out loud! I'll go first!"
And five minutes later they learn that Dirk is very vocal about his constructive criticism. Well. Maybe constructive is a bit strong…
"Lalonde, your sestina sucks balls."
"Shut up, Strider, it's not meant to be a fucking sestina. I'm just writing whatever comes to mind. We can't all be poetic geniuses in ten minutes, ass."
"Are you doing a poetic prophecy. You are doing a poetic prophecy aren't you. Come on, as if the wizards weren't bad enough-"
"Oh hell no, what was that about wizards? Wizards are the shit!"
"You should put in a ninja!"
"Quiet Roxy. Jake no. You can't just throw in a ninja. Jake. What are you doing Jake."
"Fuck yes let's throw in a ninja!"
"Roxy, no."
"Roxy yes."
"Well shit, what's a word for defenestrate that has six syllables?"
"Who uses defenestrate in a prophecy?"
"It's not a prophecy, it's going to be a proper fucking sestina!"
"Shut up Dirk, nobody cares about your sestinas."
And yeah, Jane is sure that they're not going to get anything done today.
-
"Hey bro, how's your piece going?" Dirk tosses out the obligatory greeting before immediately going to raid the fridge for any leftovers he can microwave. Striders don't do grocery shopping. Or, in Jane's words, Striders don't do a lot of things that they need in order to function properly even though they should because Striders are damn idiots who can't take care of themselves. But whatever. Jane's words.
"It's going," Dave mumbles around his chicken nuggets. "No more McDonalds."
"Well fuck you too. Pop tarts it is."
"Don't you dare take the cherry flavored ones."
Dirk snorts. "Try again, Dave. I already know you hate cherry flavor." Dirk pulls out the peanut butter pop tarts. "Reverse psychology ain't gonna work on me."
"To quote the biggest jackass this side of the universe, well fuck you too."
They eat and prepare their breakfasts in comfortable silence.
"How's yours going?" Dave asks.
"Abso-fucking-lutely nowhere," Dirk announces grandiosely. The toaster pings and Dirk rises with a disposable plate to quickly get it while it's still hot. "This team is a disaster in progress. Too many conflicting personalities, for one. Absolutely no idea what constitutes a good romance, too."
"Aw, is this not turning out like one of your precious animes?"
Dirk very valiantly does not answer. He scarfs down the pop tart and Dave polishes off the last of the soggy day-old fries so they leave for campus at the same time, as usual.
On the way, Dave decides that it's a spectacular time to ramble. "I guess this class isn't too bad. Calliope's a pretty awesome teacher. And so far the collab thing is going okay. I mean, John's a gigantic idiot and Jade's got too much of a science lady-boner to go along with Rose's ideas- hey and talking of Rose she has this really fucking terrifying thing about tentacles, shit I am never going to unhear what she said last time- but yeah, it's going cool. Also, they're all really hot."
"Well, at least we've got that much in common," Dirk says. "They're hot too but their personalities are insufferable. Roxy insists that writing drunk is the only way to work and has this weird fixation on wizards, Jake has no planning whatsoever and throws in every other thought on the basis that 'it could be cool you never know' and Jane is a tightass. Like, she literally writes three sentences for every scene. And color codes them based on the characters that are in each scene. Fuck. We are never going to get shit done."
"Heh. Good luck to you, bro."
They reach the campus within the next minute which spares Dirk from having to think of a way to continue that conversation. The obligatory "See ya," is said and they part ways- Caliborn apparently refuses to teach in the same building as Calliope and she herself is not opposed to the idea, which means that of fucking course their classrooms are put on the opposite ends of campus.
And what a bright way to start the day, being yelled at by Caliborn. Christ, what the fuck was Dirk thinking when he decided to take a creative writing major.
-
All right, so I established this document so that we can try to brainstorm together. Perhaps we can use our pesterchum font in order to distinguish ourselves?
You got it, Crocker.
sure thing
That sounds positively dandy!
Good! :B Now that that's out of the way, what ideas do you have for the prompt? I mean, it's rather open so we could do almost anything, honestly.
i vote we put in wizards
That's what you always vote.
damn straight!!! wizards are awesome!
Not to be pushy but what about alien wizards?
even better jakey boy. we are going to ace this thing. also i think i need to be more drunk for this.
Vetoed.
Agreed.
oh come on you two are no fun
Not even just one alien wizard?
No, not even just one. Look okay, why don't we start off with a word association of what the prompt makes you think or feel? "The essence of romance is uncertainty."
i dunno bout you but im thinkin of smoking hot gay alien wizards
Aliens.
A murdered love interest.
The inevitability of human nature driving the slow decay of a relationship, culminating in a tidal wave of distrust and grudges and how the march of time does nothing but chip away at the fragile human heart.
…
...
wow pretentious much lol
It is not pretentious.
yes it is
No.
yes
Oh no, there is no fucking way we are doing this. Stop right now. Don't you oh come on dirk stop being such a spoilsport fucking dare. Well, shit. Typing in the middle of someone is just not cool. well sorry except not really because shit like this is the only reason i would ever use google docs Jesus flipping Christ I can't do this OH YEAH well NEITHER CAN I
Uh chums can we get back on track now?
Yeah, fuck this. It's not going to work. Maybe things will go better when we can scream at each other in person, who the fuck knows. See you.
Wait! Dirk we have to work on this assifnsdjknkjnfoweufnjklkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
I think hes gone.
jeeesus is that guy a dick or what
a hot dick
but still a dick
Er i think that jane isnt feeling well.
woo look at that keysmash go
*looks around nervously* And er yes i suppose dirk does look rather dashing.
holy shit you roleplay in astersks whatever how you spell those things you are so adorbs jakey
I. Need. To go. Calm down.
yeah sure take your time
So this doesnt seem to have been quite a successful venture.
ill say but who cares about that
spill jakey boy
Spill what?
how hot you think dork is
dirk
lol either way it works
and janey for that matter
like, hot damn everyone on this team is totes hot
like, 11/10 cause dat ass is glorious
would tap that
would tap that so hard
Uh i think i er also have to go now er.
*glances furtively* Yes everyone is indeed very attractive good bye!
hahaha
shit i think im gonna go get a drink
oh you left already
yeah, totally cool
leaving me alone
oh for fucks sake im talking to myself
im gonna go get that drink
-
"...So long story short, that's essentially how the rest of the month went. And the next. And the next. And now we only have two days to finish writing this and we're all going to Roxy's house later this evening to finish it," Jake finishes.
His cousin hides a laugh in her cereal. "Wow, you guys sure are having trouble."
"That's an understatement," Jake sighs. "How has your class been going?"
Jade perks up. "Our group's doing great! John comes up with really fantastic ideas and he's good at developing them. And Dave and Rose both have a talent with words. Well, not really in the same way- Rose is more eloquent but Dave comes up with hilarious metaphors so they're in charge of fleshing it out into the actual piece. So I'm editing after the both of them to make sure that it's stylistically cohesive, and we're making a lot of progress."
Jake sighs yet again. "I wish my group had half the organization of yours. It'd save all of us a headache."
Jade laughs. "Well, at least you're not as bad as this one group in my class. There are these two guys, Sollux and Eridan, and they keep arguing over which of the two male leads should be the heroine's love interest. And I think the other guy in their group is always high when he comes into class, or something. And the girl in their group, Feferi, she let me read some of her writing and I think she plans to turn the assignment into an essay about marine wildlife, or something like that."
Jake snorts into his sandwiches. "Hah! I guess at least we're agreeing not to write anything against each others' backs. That's something at least."
"Tavros told me his group is just getting together every weekend to play DnD and they're turning their campaign into a story."
"Well, that's good for them! A bit of roleplaying never hurt anybody."
"And I bugged Karkat until he told me what he was writing. So their entire group is writing salacious and steamy romances that may or may not have vampires in them." Jade grins, and then adds, "There's this one guy in their group who's a stuck up prude but he has a horse fetish so Karkat just threw in some vampire centaurs to shut him up."
Jake looks intrigued. "Vampire centaurs, you say?"
"Jake, no. That's plagiarism."
"Darn."
-
"Ready to try Mama Lalonde's tried and true method for making literary masterpieces?" Roxy waggles both her eyebrows and the bottles of vodka at the other three.
They look between themselves. Finally, Jane shrugs.
"Why not. We're two days before the deadline and we haven't come up with anything whatsoever. Why shouldn't we get utterly drunk and see what nonsense we spew out?"
"That's the spirit, Janey!" Roxy cheers. "Also this. This stuff is the good spirits." She hands one bottle to Jane, who despite her words holds it as if it were going to explode at any second. "What about you two?"
"Sure," Dirk says. "Like Jane said, why the hell not. Maybe getting completely shitfaced is the proper way to create timeless classics that will remain a cornerstone of modern literature, who the fuck knows. Hand that bottle over."
Roxy passes him a bottle. "Worked well enough for Hemingway. Share that with Jakey; I'm not using up all my booze in one night."
"I am still not convinced that this is entirely a good idea. We need to be serious about this," Jake protests, even as Dirk yanks the cork out of the bottle with sheer force and passes it to Jake after a swig.
"We are being serious," Dirk says. "I mean, all our sober attempts didn't end well. Maybe the alcohol will make us not as neurotic about the whole thing and we can actually get shit done, who the fuck knows. Also, this is very good booze, so why the fuck not?"
"Atta boy, Di-Stri." Roxy's pouring something into a Hello Kitty themed coffee mug, and Jane finally has the corkscrew in hand to open up the bottle of wine. "And a'course it's good. I only get the really good stuff. No point in drinking otherwise. Bottoms up!"
-
And the next morning:
"Where are my clothes?"
"Over there. With the rest of them. Pile of clothes. There."
"You're not making sense, Dirk."
"Give me a moment. Well, actually, on second though they may be Jake's clothes. Oh, huh, the laptop is still on."
"Wait. Are we all naked? Oh my god did we have sex last night. Is that why we are all naked. Naked and sweaty. And gross. Oh my god. Oh my god. We did have sex last night how."
"Shit, we actually did write the entire thing in one night. While drunk. In between the sex. Probably. Holy shit."
"What."
"Oh my sweet Jesus, why are there so many typos."
"Who opened the windows. Who opened the fucking curtains god damnit fuck my eyes."
"Jesus fuck Rox, you and Jake have a one-track mind. Holy fuck there's still an alien wizard in here. Two. The blue one is named Jakke and the pink one is Rhyxoy. Or. Actually that may entirely be typos I don't even know. Huh. Apparently alien wizards have tentacle dicks, who knew."
"WHY ARE THERE STILL ALIEN WIZARDS AND WHY ARE THEIR DICKS MENTIONED."
"Janey. Janey, my best friend, my awesomest friend- no shouting at hungover people. Di-Stri, close the damn curtains."
"Mnaargh."
"Ssh Jake, go back to sleep. Wait, actually before you do that, can you pass me my bra?"
"...'kay. Here ya go."
"Aww, thanks Jakey boy."
"Oh my god I am literally drowning in the typos. I cannot breathe for all the typos invading my lungs. So many fucking typos."
"Suck it up Dirkie."
"Also, who wrote the sex."
"The what!"
"The sex. Well actually the sex is, like, all of it."
"Oh my god did we write drunken porn for the assignment. The assignment that's due tomorrow. The assignment that we have to give to Caliborn. Tomorrow. To. Caliborn."
"Yes we did."
"Sweet! Lemme see!"
"Roxy no."
"Ssh Jane, you go to sleep too. Don't worry, Mama Lalonde and Di-Stri are gonna take care of all this."
"Noooo."
"Hush Jane baby, sleep."
-
"All right you shits," Caliborn announces. "You're going to give a five minute presentation on your piece and how it fits the prompt. Group 1. You go first."
It takes the entire group nearly a full minute to shuffle up to the front of the class. When they get up there, with a thick stack of printed papers, double sided and in Times New Roman size 12, as per submission instructions.
Up at the front, Kankri clears his throat, no doubt ready to bore the entire class to death. Porrim and Meenah look halfway there already, in fact. But before Kankri can even get a word in, Aranea pointedly interrupts him with a small cough and adjustment of her glasses.
"Our project was to explore the mating and reproduction habits of a fictional species called the Leprechaun. The Leprechauns have nine different types of romantic relationships, not all of which are mutually exclusive, which creates uncertainty in determining exactly how relationships are viewed among partners." Hrgh, maybe Aranea wasn't such a good idea either. "In addition to the polyamory implicit in such a system of romantic attraction, Leprechaun reproduction is exclusively homosexual which-"
"Which fetishizes homosexuality," Porrim interjects. "Not to mention that you've only developed male Leprechaun characters which ignores the issue of sexism present in today's society. And also you make Leprechauns sound like a bad cliché for mental illnesses whose symptoms include obsessive tendencies."
Aranea gapes.
"Exactly!" Kankri snaps. "This choice of topic is highly inappropriate and could very easily offend a reader!"
Aranea bares her teeth at Kankri in a vicious smile. "And you weren't jumping all over the place for a chance to use my leprechauns to preach your views on oppressive caste systems, were you?"
Porrim snorts. "Your one-sided and oppression-perpetuating views, Kankri."
It's Kankri's turn to gape. "Who's side are you on, Porrim?"
"I'm calling it like I see it," Porrim drawls, drumming her fingers on the table. "I'm just going to say in front of an audience that I don't condone any of this." Her hand lands on top of the manuscript. "Why don't you share your contribution to this train wreck of an assignment, Meenah?"
Aranea and Kankri glare at her- then abruptly realize that they're mirroring each other's actions and go back to glaring at each other. Apparently they don't notice the irony.
"I just went and changed every other adjective to 'fucking', don't look at me," Meenah says with a shrug.
Aranea's head snaps to Meenah. "You did what! But I already emailed this to Ms. Calliope!"
"Hey, it's not as if either of you noticed!" Meenah raises her hands and snaps her gum. "'Sides, you and Kankri were having too much fun being Mr. and Mrs. Exposition. Didn't want to interrupt you guys."
"That's enough!" Caliborn snaps, slamming a hand down on his desk and marching up to grab the papers. "You're all fucking idiots. Sit down! Next group!"
-
"So we tried to do this assignment seriously, but Dirk is a pretentious asshole-"
"And Roxy seriously needs to stop with the fucking purple prose and trying to sneak in gay wizards boning in all the abandoned classrooms-"
"And Jane is a no-fun, no-description planner who projects too much onto her main heroine-"
"And Jake is a disorganized idiot who needs to understand the idea of not throwing in every single idea regardless of its quality-"
"So that wasn't working out," Jane interrupts the increasingly amused feud between Dirk and Roxy by swiftly kicking Dirk in the ankle. He remains perfectly composed. "And so there were two days before the assignment was due, and we had a grand total of 0 words."
"And then we all got utterly smashed and wrote it in one night!" Jake cheerfully adds.
"There might have also been sex at some point," Dirk adds. Jane reddens and smacks him. Again, he is unflappable.
"Scratch that, there was definitely sex," Roxy chirrups enthusiastically. "Really good sex too! So yeah, we just submitted drunken porn, basically. Like, 10,000 words of porn." She pauses. "Okay, maybe 8,000 words, because there's like 2,000 words of Dirk trying to be a smartass and Jane trying to infodump and Jake made an island explode so our characters were macking while trying to figure out how to escape a pyroclastic flow, but yeah, it's mostly porn."
Jake at last has mercy on poor Jane, and says, "Anyway! It fits the prompt because we're still uncertain about whether there's going to be any romance or not but later we're going out for coffee at the coffee shop around the block to find out for sure!"
There are two separate wolf whistles from the class: Latula and Cronus.
"So yes, that's our project." Jane mutters, hiding her face in her hands.
"It's all based on a true story," Roxy adds with a wink. "Okay well we might have embellished a bit. Like, I think the exploding volcano was the champagne or something. But it's all true! Especially the sex."
A third wolf whistle. This one is from Damara.
Jane wishes death upon her three group mates. A slow painful death by exsanguination, but any old death would do. Really.
Apparently Caliborn shares the sentiment. "You are all pathetic inferior fools. Next!"
-
So Damara's group turned out to be more or less as much of a failure as Aranea's group. Nobody is really surprised, when you give even two seconds of thought as to the members of that clusterfuck. All that Jane is really getting from listening to their presentation is that Damara might have tried to murder Horuss with a plastic butter knife at some point.
And then Kurloz's group came up with the most disgustingly tooth-rottingly sweet romance story that could ever be imagined. Jane thinks it might give her diabetes just listening to a three sentence summary. And since Meulin prefers not to and Kurloz can't speak, and Mituna's liable to just burst every single one of the veins in Caliborn's head if he does open his mouth, Latula is the one left to narrate the story of how they discovered their inspiration for this piece, complete with bad 70s slang.
It's a fucking miracle that Caliborn hasn't died of an aneurysm by this point.
-
"So, how was class?" Jane asks John over dinner.
Surprisingly, John responds by screaming and absconding from the dinner table, his hands over his eyes.
"Jane," Dad begins.
"I didn't do anything!"
-
-- GG at 7:23 pm opened memo on board Siblings? --
GG: Have your siblings/cousins been acting oddly or is that just me?
timaeusTestified [TT]
responded to memo.
TT: Oh. Well, Jane.
TT: How should I put this.
tipsyGnostalgic [TG]
responded to memo.
TG: they know we're boning
GG: What.
TT: They're the ones we exchanged work with.
TT: Apparently, unlike our own instructor, Calliope had them begin reading in class.
GG: Oh my god.
GG: Oh my god.
golgothasTerror [GT]
responded to memo.
GT: Er yes well that is quite distressing.
GT: At least i know why jade was giving me the ol finger pistols.
TT: That's a better reaction than Dave, at any rate.
TT: He locked himself in his room after yelling at me about how he did not need to know the sordid details of my love life.
GG: That's more or less what John did.
GG: But with less words and more screaming.
GG: Oh my god I can never look him in the eye again.
TG: pshh, janey don worry about it
GG: Well, how did Rose react?
TG: we hi fived and she asked for tips cos appparentyl she wants to hook up with some kid from her class
TG: or something like that yeah
TT: Figures that you and Jake get the cool sibling/cousin.
TG: what no way man rose is so not cool
TG: did you know what she said
TG: she said that our piece sucked and had no litrary value
TG: ill show her literary value
TT: Wait, she said that?
TT: Well, I officially rescind my opinion about her being cool.
TT: That's it, we are going to completely trash their piece.
GT: I think we did swell!
GG: Jake, that's what you always think.
GG: AND IS NOW REALLY THE TIME TO DISCUSS THIS TOPIC!!
TT: Sorry, can't talk. Off to go destroy the little twerps' writing with some constructive criticism, shall we say.
TG: hell yeah di-stri let's do this
GT: Oh um do you think we should help them?
GG banned TT from responding to memo.
GG banned TG from responding to memo.
GG banned GT from responding to memo.
GG: AAARGH YOU ARE ALL IMPOSSIBLE
GG closed memo.