Fandom High School

"I'm glad to see everyone back in one piece," Belle said warmly, holding a stack of packets from the front of the room. "And your final today, because of the...hectic nature of the last few weeks, will be brief. I want you to sift through these packets, which contain descriptions of the tropes and trends we've studied for the last semester. And I want you to find what you think your life, to now, has been representative of. What type of genre is it? Needless to say, I think all our stories became a little more...adventure-like last week, but maybe your story is a romance, or a bit sci-fi, or...well, I hope it's not horror. Define the major players, and the types of characters that are represented. And where do you fit in? Are you a intelligent woman who doesn't fit in at home, for instance? Do you know any badasses who aren't evil?"

Belle smiled. "Those are all people in my story, but that's something for another day. For now, just write down your answers, and you can go. You've been a wonderful, wonderful class."

It was an exhausted-looking Belle who greeted the class today. "Good morning. I hope none of you are missing anyone vital at home, but if you are, please accept my sympathies. My father's -- " She cleared her throat, shaking her head. "I've never seen anything like this before. And frankly, I'm having difficulty putting together a class, and I can't imagine you're concentrating well as a class, either."

She perched on the edge of her desk, and continued. "So, for today, I'd like to talk about how we deal with the extraordinary in real life, as opposed to literature. How characters face phenomena like this. And loss." She shook her head, and added, "And if there's anything else you want to talk about -- the missing, or your thoughts right now, we can talk about that, too."

Today, class met in a normal classroom, though Belle had brought a great deal of children's building materials, as well as art supplies, scrap paper and bits of metal and pipe cleaners, and random bits of cloth.

"Speculative fiction," she began, smiling at the class once they'd assembled, "is often called science fiction or realistic fantasy these days. It deals in the question of 'What if?' What if our legs were backwards? What if there was no need to sleep? What if we conquered space travel, and could visit the stars?" Careful, Belle, your old timeyness is showing. "Science fiction, in particular, focuses on invention. Isaac Asimov said there are three types of science fiction -- gadget, adventure, and social. In a 'gadget' story, the focus is on an invention itself, and how it shapes the world. An 'adventure' story uses the invention as a dramatic prop -- a means to propel the action. And a 'social' story focuses on how the presence of the invention affects people's lives."

She selected a jar of Play-Doh, pulling it out to play with. "Your task today is to invent something that you think could change this world, and then share how you could make a gadget, adventure, or social story revolve around it. For example, if I wanted to make a robot that could fold all my laundry for me, I could write a story just about the robot itself, about how the robot folds all my laundry incorrectly and sends me on a quest for dresses, or what people do with the time that they'd use folding their clothes before and the impact that spare time might have on society." She grinned, then made an ushering motion. "Get to work, now."

"Good morning!" Belle chirped, and when students walked in, they would find themselves in an ordinary-looking bookstore. (Belle could have gone with pretty much any setting, but, well, she had her biases.) "Today, I thought that in honor of our upcoming dance this weekend, we could talk a little about trends in fiction having to do with romance." She smiled, and added, "Or, less intimidatingly, dating, since I imagine many of you will be taking an escort with you."

"The thing about writing any genre is that there are certain established rules. If the audience finds whatever absurd situation you've set up to be romantic, then it doesn't matter if it would work in real life. Take, for example, how often in fiction young ingenues fall in love with their evil captors, who are really good inside." All said without a trace of irony, though she did add, "I've seen it happen in my own life, and it happens, but it's unlikely for most cases."

"Then we have things like how a held gaze can electrify the audience reading or viewing the couple...when in real life, it would probably make you kind of uncomfortable. Or a grand gesture, which directly contrasts the idea that money can't buy love."

"However." She turned her attention to the class. "At your age, the dating is more important." Shh, Belle, you're not much older than your students. "There's the blind date, which is similar to something they do in town, I think. There's the question of saying you love someone, which can apparently hit a little too soon, in dating." She wouldn't know. She was a Disney princess. "There's the question of whether something is or is not a date in the first place, which I'm sure will be the case with many of you taking friends this weekend."

Belle gestured behind her to the piles of precariously stacked books, the shelves of common interests, the coffee cart where things could be spilled. "Today we're going to talk about meeting cute. This is a way to introduce two characters in an unlikely, charming fashion." She clapped her hands together once, smiling, and added, "I'd like you to pair up and, using the materials around you which you may absolutely mod, 'meet cute.'" Did Belle secretly hope she might be setting up some Homecoming dates? Shh, maybe.

"Good morning!" Belle chirped, already passing out packets for today's class as soon as students entered the room. "Today, we're not going to do anything too fancy -- we're just going to talk about families. We all have them -- some of them are biological, some of them are adopted. I thought it might be pretty appropriate to talk about trends we see in literature as far as families go. If nothing else, it'll remind us just how bad our own situations aren't."

Though Belle was fairly excited about her own guest, to be honest. More than fairly. Very, actually.

"There are plenty of tropes dealing with families, but let's start with the big ones: we often see large, clan-like family structures in stories, particularly in most pantheons of classical mythology, like Roman and Greek and Norse. Everyone is someone's father and brother and child, it seems, and their power stretches through the entire family tree. Often, these families all run a business together, though occasionally you'll find that they also perform less savory tasks together. I understand there's a number of crime families that work together, similarly," Belle said, flipping through the packet as she spoke. "And of course, with families, you have many different kinds of parents -- doting ones, villainous ones, even entirely absent ones, which is a much more recurring theme in literature than I'd like. Many of our favorite heroes are orphans." Her expression softened, and she added, "Or only one parent is living, anyway."

She cleared her throat, and added, "I'd like you to pair up with one another and discuss, after reading through the packet -- what's the worst-sounding family scenario most commonly inflicted upon protagonists? What's the best? Why would an author choose any of these backgrounds to tell a story? And do you find your own family in any of these trends?" She smiled quickly, and added, "Fiction imitates life, after all."

"Hello, class!" Belle called cheerfully, as the students assembled in the Danger Shop. Today, they would find themselves not in last week's nondescript classroom, but in a possibly familiar set of cliffside ruins. Belle herself was perched on a crumbling bit of stone, a group of swords and some strips of cloth laying on the ground beside her. "Now, last week, we talked about what types of stories you all like to read, and one of the most popular answers was action and adventure -- which, to be perfectly honest, is my favorite, too. We're going to spend a couple of weeks running through some of the great patterns you find in each genre before moving onto the next, and I figured...well, what better way to kick off action than with action?"

She hopped off her sword, selecting two cloths -- one black, and one white. "How many of your favorite books, plays, or movies," she was still trying to act like that concept wasn't unfamiliar to her, but it was hard, "feature a great fight between two opposing forces? Sure, our favorite stories might deal with one man against many, or two armies running at each other at full force, but oftentimes, it comes down to one versus one. I borrowed this setting because from what I understand, there's a film with a famous swordfighting scene that takes place here, and while the color scheme is off -- black is usually signifying evil, while white stands for good -- I thought it might work for our purposes today."

She started to move through the class, alternating between passing out white and black cloths, along with a list for each student. "Tie these around your wrist or waist or into your hair -- I don't particularly care. Team White, you stand for the good, the right, the moral high ground. Team Black, you oppose them -- you stand for personal gain, for evil, for selfishness. Remember these things as you fight, because they should influence your choices. I want you to team up, and everyone grab a sword. While the ends are blunt and you won't hurt yourselves, I want you to reenact a classic swordfight using as many of the tropes on that list as possible. Afterwards, I want you to think about how many times in your life you've seen those actually used. It's probably more than you think."