The History of Sex: Workshop 2, Period 3 (Thursday, May 22)

[tinkerbitch.livejournal.com]

Barney paged through a novel impatiently at the podium. "How am I at page 145 and there's no porn yet? What kind of romance novel is this? Don't these people know there's a formula for writing this drivel: A dozen pages; sex scene; a fake plot point; sex scene; lather, rinse, repeat!"

Tink zipped over and inspected the cover. Oooooooooh. This was one of those Olde Time romance novels, the ones where everyone was British and wore fancy dresses. Those seemed to go, dozen pages, awkward physical encounter, dozen pages, stolen kiss. Sometimes nobody got naked until page 200 when the guy finally found his way -- STUDENTS! There were students and she would stop that thought right there. Hello, students!

"Right, well," Barney straightened up and cleared his throat. "Ahem. I have a valid reason for looking at this, really. Today we're focusing on fictional sex, aka the Romance Novel."

Romance novels tended to be written by middle-aged housewives, and featured young, sweet, innocent women who were seduced by dangerous, exotic men, who suddenly stopped whoring and cheating in order to be faithful to that one particular young, sweet, innocent woman forever and ever from then on. In other words, children, we were fully in the realm of escapism and wish fulfillment for bored, middle-aged housewives, who were also the typical audience for those books. This was why the guy occasionally rode the downtown train but the girl never managed to make the trip. Know your audience, children.

Barney raised an eyebrow. "That's because those bored, middle-aged housewives don't realize that they too could follow in the footsteps of Harriet Jones and become a Cougar one day."

Someone should tell them. Make-over, make-over! Tink loved make-overs!! A bored housewife enters the cocoon, and emerges ... a Cougar! Chased by young men everywhere, and adored for her fabulous chicness! Now that would make a good romance novel!

"Speaking of what would make a good romance novel, that is your assignment: Create a synopsis, story, or excerpt from your very own romance novel. The catch? You've gotta keep it as vague as possible. Pretend you're not a slacker and you have a job and at any moment your boss could walk by your desk and look over your shoulder to discover this work in progress." Even to Barney it sounded like he was asking them to write fic.

Oooooh, fic! That could be their homework! Children: for homework, look up a modern twist on the romance novel: slash fic. Type those words into Google, find some interesting stories about characters they knew and loved, print their favorite to bring in for next week! ... Tink was possibly shivering with evil happiness.

Comments

The Sign-In [5/22]

[tinkerbitch.livejournal.com]

With a flourish! You have consumption and your corset is too tight!

Re: The Sign-In [5/22]

[always-damp.livejournal.com]

Toby!

The Chit-Chat [5/22]

[tinkerbitch.livejournal.com]

Will Lord Castlington make an honest woman out of Lady Fairbanks, now that he's seduced her in full view of the ton?!

Re: The Chit-Chat [5/22]

[intraspective]

Ino? Was rather thinking that this was, like, her favourite class ever. She was totally grinning.

Re: The Chit-Chat [5/22]

[armybrat-lois.livejournal.com]

Lois was grinning throughout the lecture. She loved these two. Even if Barney thought she sounded hot and dirty.

Re: The Chit-Chat [5/22]

[sarcasm-guy.livejournal.com]

Sokka raised his hand. "Unless I'm mistaken, neither of you is a middle-aged housewife...?"

The second half of the sentence, the part where he'd be laughing at them, he just let hang in the air.

Re: The Chit-Chat [5/22]

[thatsamilkshake]

Now that Francine was no longer freaking out over the idea of people with wings, she'd boingboinged to the other extreme and was staring raptly at Tink, the entire time.

Re: The Chit-Chat [5/22]

[ihaveniceteeth.livejournal.com]

Gwen was somewhat saddened by how tame Barney and Tink's taste was.

After all, there was nothing better than a dramatic reading of a trashy novel to make those slow nights when the world wasn't about to end go faster.

Re: The Chit-Chat [5/22]

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

This class, totally could've been worse. A seasoned internet user like Mac had seen enough fic in her time to be able to work with vague dirty fiction.

Re: The Chit-Chat [5/22]

[cheminthehead.livejournal.com]

This would be Gladys' first encounter with fiction. It wasn't sitting very well, and the glow in her eyes flickered rapidly as she stared at the front of the class.

Re: The Chit-Chat [5/22]

[always-damp.livejournal.com]

Toby made sure to write his homework on the back of his hand. He didn't want to miss out on this 'slash' stuff even if he had no idea what it was.

Re: The Chit-Chat [5/22]

[my-tragic-past.livejournal.com]

Kevin had a bit of a blank look on his face. He was trying to remember the last time he actually read a book.

The Writing Assignment [5/22]

[tinkerbitch.livejournal.com]

Bring us your purple prose, your manhoods, your maiden cores. (With a little vagueness, to save our collective sanity and not to incur the wrath of NWS.)

Re: The Writing Assignment [5/22]

[sarcasm-guy.livejournal.com]

Sokka began penning an outline for an epic romance, wherein the Lord of the Manor attempted to seduce a young, innocent divorcée who proceeded to beat the stuffing out of him. After some comic mishaps involving twins, mistaken identities, women dressing up as men, men dressing up as women, and lots and lots of graphic sex scenes, most involving three or more people, the two end up falling in love. After getting married they ride around the countryside having more sex and blowing lots of shit up. With LASERS.

Re: The Writing Assignment [5/22]

[isourking.livejournal.com]

For once Ron seemed quite happy with his assignment...

Windy Bird heaved a heavy sigh which jiggled her bosums in an oh-so-attractive manner which instantly caught the attention of her beloved Peee-tah.

"Oh Pee-tah!" she swooned, "Take me away from that horrible pixie on your pirate ship of love!"

"Oh Windy! I have not idea what I saw in that wee little thing" Pee-tah declared as he grabbed her roughly. "All she does is complain and moan about fashion and get drunk on absinthe."

"She never appreciated you!" Windy declared batting her eyelashes at her darling Pee-tah. "Not like I do."

"Oh Windy! Let me remove your petticoat," Pee-tah growled. "And show me what a real woman who's not three inches tall can do."

Re: The Writing Assignment [5/22]

[raspberryturk]

Reno stared at his paper.

Write vague porn?

He stared at the paper even more. There was such a thing as vague porn? He had no idea. He had never given a damn if Tseng stumbled across him poking through straight works of heavily-detailed fine erotic literature on company time. He'd take his reprimand and be good with it.

So he was having a hell of a time.

Finally, he settled on the best vague-porn reference he'd ever been exposed to. He set the pen to the paper, shrugged his shoulders, and wrote his erotic masterpiece. Only plagiarizing slightly from his girlfriend.

"You know."

And if they didn't know, they shouldn't be reading porn in the first place, dammit.

Re: The Writing Assignment [5/22]

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

Oh. Euphamisms. The key to vague. This little excerpt was full of them.

Mac was in no way taking this seriously, and actually finding it pretty entertaining.

Ten minutes in and she had an excerpt from her dramatic novella of forbidden love, complete with raunchy girl-on-girl patches all planned out. Had to work with what she knew, after all.

Re: The Writing Assignment [5/22]

[cheminthehead.livejournal.com]

Gladys stood still for a very long time before picking up a pencil and a piece of paper and starting to write. The pencil disappeared in her huge hand. The paper looked like a post-it note. The story was...really bad.

There Was A Secretary And She Worked In A Bank. Her Employer Did Not Notice Her And Then He Was Engaged. There Was Nearly Inappropriate Touching.

Golems weren't so much with the creating.

Re: The Writing Assignment [5/22]

[ihaveniceteeth.livejournal.com]

Gwen started writing.

After she'd finished an epic recounting of Jacques, Yanto, and Gwyn's games of naked hide-and-seek in their secret underground Cardiff base complete with tower puns, she looked over it.

She thought it was rather good, but that wasn't really the assignment, so she started purpling it up, including changing the character's descriptions to the young captain, the Welsh teaboy, and the former police constable.

Who cared that that could describe dozens of people?

Re: The Writing Assignment [5/22]

[my-tragic-past.livejournal.com]

Kevin sat there for a while, letting his imagination do its thing. Then he started writing:

2 dudes on a beach. Doin it. 1st dude goes to pee, 2nd dude gets struck by litning litening a stray rock and dies. 1st dude comes back, is v. sad and runs to get help. Evil hot guy shows up, makes a spell, brings dead dude back as a zommby sex slave. Go off to his lair in a cave and do it lots...

He thought it was a pretty good start.

Re: The Writing Assignment [5/22]

[ashockingbitch]

Jenny wrote of the touching romance between two superheroes. Two male superheroes: Batman and Superman Apollo and the Midnighter Bert and Ernie.

Yes.

The page was full of references to 'the dark one' and 'the light one' and 'purple-helmeted love warriors.' She was quite proud of her appalling handiwork.

Re: The Writing Assignment [5/22]

[likethegun]

Sam was, unsurprisingly, horrified by this assignment. After a few moments of staring at the blank paper in front of him, he began to write about a shy, quiet librarian, and the sexy vixen who came in and turned his whole world upside down.

There was nothing truly dirty though. He wasn't about to write that sort of thing in public.

The TAs [5/22]

[tinkerbitch.livejournal.com]

Last week she made him her bitch; this week, let's hope he brought a gift.

Re: The TAs [5/22]

[isourking.livejournal.com]

There was no gift. Not at all...

The Professors [5/22]

[tinkerbitch.livejournal.com]

Their love is far too twisted and wrong to ever get a romance novel of its own. This is a good thing.

Re: The Professors [5/22]

[sarcasm-guy.livejournal.com]

Because he's such a nice guy, Sokka dropped off a bottle of Scotch at the front of the room. Awwww.

The OOC [5/22]

[tinkerbitch.livejournal.com]

Be dirty, yet vague! We're so interested, omg!

Re: The OOC [5/22]

[thatsamilkshake]

Oh, Weasley. So, so dead. Cut down in the prime of his life.