Fear in Literature, Tuesday 4th period

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

Jon looked downright peaky today (and annoyed at his santa hat), but he scrubbed his hands over his face and determined to soldier on. The board read: The Web: The fear of being controlled, trapped, or manipulated. Also arachnophobia.

"Spiders," he said with a shudder. "They're the most obvious manifestation here. But beyond that, the Web is manipulation. Someone or something is controlling you that you might not even know about, but your actions aren't your own. Hopefully today's reading got that across. Do you think it did? Do you think the protagonist is being controlled, or is it purely his imagination? Some combination of the two? Is free will even possible, even if it's your own nature controlling your decisions?"

Jon made it through the class, but he totally forgot to put anything on the board for next week.

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[intheeyeofthebeholding]

Paranoid! Or with a spider.

Listen to the lecture

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

Wonder if your instructor knows that spiders are a vital part of the ecosystem.

Class activity

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Is the story's protagonist manipulated by outside forces? Controlled by his own nature? Or just paranoid? Could he have chosen a different outcome?

Talk to Jon!

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

He's...mostly here.

OOC!

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

Whee, Jon's favorite fear! :D

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[x_discospider_x]

Troy Barnes

Re: Class activity

[x_discospider_x]

"Man," said Troy, who had managed to at least skim the material this week, "I think that guy just needs a vacation or something. But, also? It's December? So I totally get it, too."

Re: Class activity

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

"I'm not sure what December has to do with it," Jon said, frowning in confusion.

Re: Class activity

[x_discospider_x]

"I mean, okay, yeah, sure," Troy explained, or, at the very least, attempted to, but, really, there were no guaranteed with this kind of thing, "it seems fine now, but who's to say that by the end of the day, these," he pointed to his head and the Santa hat fitted nicely onto it, "arne't going to start trying to eat through our skulls to get to our brains? Any day now, all this cute, festive holiday cheer could turn violent and mean. Last year, I ended up in the clinic! Mean things were said about me! And they killed Wayne's snowmobile!"

So, someone still had a lot of pent-up trauma about Christmastime on Fandom Island, yes.

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[onlyajones]

Josephine Jones

Re: Class activity

[onlyajones]

“I think it might have been both that he was controlled by his own nature and that he was paranoid,” Jo said once she had considered her response.

There was a pause and she found herself fiddling with her Santa hat briefly. She had noticed that there was nothing put on the board for next week and wondered if she should mention it and finally decided that she would feel bad if she didn’t say anything ,”um, excuse me Mr. Sims are we supposed to have a reading assignment for next week?”

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[noonedecidesmyfate]

Belle

Re: Class activity

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

"That, um. That sounds bad," Jon agreed. "Hopefully it won't happen again. I was given to believe that these are usually fairly innocuous."

Re: Class activity

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

"Are we...um. Oh, right." Jon blinked at the board, panicking a little. He rubbed his eyes. "I'll...I'll have to check my notes, and I'll email you all the assignment."

Spoiler alert: he would forget.

Re: Class activity

[onlyajones]

“Oh, okay,” Jo nodded and then tilted her head, “are you okay Mr. Sims?”she noticed he seemed…distracted.

Re: Class activity

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

Jon managed something that was almost a smile. "I'm fine, Jo, thank you for asking."

Jon was always fine, whether he was or not.