Fandom High School

When Rick's class arrived at the Danger Shop, they would have found him dressed in black, standing over what looked an awful lot like his own corpse.

"Curses!" Rick exclaimed, stroking his new beard (that looked a lot like it had been drawn on with an eyebrow pencil). "My name is Dick Castle, long-lost twin of the late Rick Castle. Evil twin obviously. I was planning on killing my newly found, yet deeply hated brother and assuming his identity as a best-selling crime author, but you've come in at the worst possible moment, after I've committed the crime but before I could cover it up."

'Dick' paused for dramatic effect. "Clearly the only thing to do is help me hide the corpse, then you'll all pass and I'll get my new identity on. You'll all need to come up with ways to dispose of the body, and then we'll test out the feasibility of them."

Someone had a very odd idea of what constituted a final.

[OOC: OCD up.]

[Class Roster]

In a stunning and unexpected change, Rick was actually there at the start of class, albeit looking somewhat the worse for wear. There was also coffee and moddable pastries, lots of both.

"Morning kids," he greeted the class. "Sorry about missing the last few classes, but I was unavoidably detained." Well, that was one way of putting it.

"Today's class is going to have two parts," Rick continued. "Firstly we're going to do a kind of brainstorming session, talking a bit about ourselves, you know skills you might have, the kind of things you'd carry around with you on a random day when you're off campus, that sort of thing. After we've done that, you're each going to dash off a quick story synopsis about being stuck down a hole in the woods with your classmates. How you might use your various skills and items as a team to survive until you either escape or are rescued."

"At the end of the class, you'll share your outlines with the rest of the class, so we can get an idea of how different people can take the same basic information and interpret it in wildly different ways through the lens of their own personality and experience."

[OOC: OCD up.]

[Class Roster]

When Rick had informed his class to meet him in the Danger Shop and unlike last week, he was actually there on time. Albeit without the coffee and pastries.

He was also wearing the full protective gear for fencing and carrying an Épée. "The pen might be mightier than the sword," he began. "But the sword is just as much fun, and also provides a good example of what I'm talking about in using your experiences to add to the creative process. Now there's a couple of different things for you to do today, you can put on some protective gear and practice fencing against each other or the Danger Shop. There are also various kinds of swords for you to look at and handle."

For maybe the first time ever in a class, Rick's tone hardened into what Alexis called his Dad Voice. "The safeties are on, but you should still treat everything in this room like real weapons and not like toys, especially those of you who decide to fence each other. Don't be idiots or we'll spend the rest of the summer in the library doing research. Real boring research."

"What I want you to do while you're doing all this is to take note of what you're doing, what it feels it, then start imagining the what ifs," Rick continued in his regular voice. "For example, try fencing, then compare the weight of an Épée to a small sword or rapier, and consider how much more effort you'd need to use them instead. Think about how you might use a katana differently to a claymore. Notice how your field of vision is changed in the fencing mask and imagine how much less you'd see in the visor slits of a knight's helmet. You get my drift."

"Now by next week, I'd like you to all have written something using the prompt 'sword-fight'. You can interpret the prompt however you like, and it doesn't have to be long, it can be a haiku if you want, but you have to use your experience in today's class to inform your writing."

[OOC: OCD up.]

[Class Roster]