Poem: "Tales Out of School"
Sep. 7th, 2016 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis poem came out of the September 6, 2016 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from librarygeek, alatefeline, rix_scaedu, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cflute. It has been sponsored by librarygeek. This poem belongs to the Berettaflies thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It follows the demifiction "Letter to a Super Hurrah" by alatefeline and "A Letter to a Young Fan from a Super Hurrah" by siliconshaman so read those first to understand the character dynamics.
"Tales Out of School"
Week 5, Day 5
Ashley had discovered something
new and interesting to do with her time.
She couldn't go to an ordinary school anymore,
unless she wore her iso-suit with its tight,
scratchy seams. SPAZMAT had brought in
an educational consultant who was such a dork
that Ashley felt tempted to tuck him behind her
to protect him from the jocks and the bullies.
Kent Authement had coaxed out her interests in
the macabre, which wasn't hard, but he'd also
discovered her taste for certain branches of
classic literature and other things deeply buried.
He even talked Ashley into enrolling
in Zydeco, a cyberschool for people who
couldn't attend ordinary classes or else
found them somehow insufficient.
To her surprise, Ashley enjoyed it, not only
because the quirky classes intrigued her but also
because the school seemed to be a grease-trap
for every geek, freak, goth, and weirdo in Easy City.
When everyone was that strange,
she just didn't stand out much.
Even though people asked Ashley about
berettaflies approximately as often as ever,
the questions were more about what their guts
looked like (which she didn't know; the dissection
hadn't been published yet) and what it was like
to see in the ultraviolet (which she couldn't explain).
So when Ashley began getting fanmail from
an odd little babygoth, it was only natural
that Ashley told Kaytee about Zydeco.
A while later, Kaytee popped up in
the chatlounge where students could
hang out between their classes.
Ashley: Hey, you made it! What
classes are you taking here?
Kaytee: Macabre Art and Making Friends.
Mom says I have to take one postal class
for every creepy class. Today we drew
a rackoon skull and and a gator.
Ashley struggled to figure out the meaning.
Oh, probably prosocial, that made sense.
Ashley: People say it's good to stay balanced.
I'm taking Easy City Cemeteries and SPOON History.
Want something cool for your art class to draw?
Kaytee: Sure, what is it?
Ashley: My science friends found
another berettafly, dead, and took photos.
They'll be in tomorrow's news but I got copies
this afternoon if folks want to draw them.
She uploaded an image.
Kaytee: AW SOME!1!
Ashley was used to being lonely,
to hiding from people who said one thing
but meant another and kept trying to edit
her reality until it didn't fit her anymore.
She wasn't used to being popular,
to people crowding around her to see
what she brought and saying how cool it was
but she thought, secretly, it was kinda neat.
* * *
NOTES:
Kent Authement -- He has tawny-fair skin, brown eyes, and short dark hair that is receding. He wears a mustache and beard. He wears glasses. He speaks English, Spanish, and Cajun French. Kent works as an educational consultant in Easy City, helping high school and college students to plan their coursework and adults to make plans for continuing education. He also teaches at Zydeco, an online school open to soups, gifted students, disabled people, and others for whom conventional school is inaccessible or unsuitable. The classes offered are decidedly eclectic, with students sorted into them based more on interest and ability than on age.
Qualities: Good (+2) Educational Consultant, Good (+2) Energetic, Good (+2) Fandom Is a Way of Life, Good (+2) Outgoing, Good (+2) Smart
Poor (-2) Such a Dork
* * *
Cyberschool is a popular option for disabled, gifted, or other students who find conventional schools inaccessible or insufficient. T-America adds superpowers to that list. Children who cannot attend regular schools are entitled to help from a home teacher. Adults in the same position get what is called an educational consultant instead, since adults are in charge of their own educational choices.
Zydeco -- Pronounced “zi-de-co” a kind of Cajun dance music that is a combination of traditional Cajun music, mixed with R&B, and African blues.
-- Cajun French Language Dictionary
Macabre art features grotesque and/or funerary motifs. See a gallery. While many of Zydeco's classes are generic such as Making Friends, a lot of them focus on quirky local interests such as cemeteries.
Rose butterflies such as the crimson rose and common rose are components of the berettaflies. They share similarities in the black-and-red body with black-red-white wings. A distinctive fieldmark of the berettaflies not shared by the roses is that berettaflies have a red spot on at the ends of their wingtails. This post about a butterfly garden shows a common rose lying dead on the path, similar to what the scientists found and Ashley shared.
librarygeek, alatefeline, rix_scaedu, and cflute. It has been sponsored by librarygeek. This poem belongs to the Berettaflies thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It follows the demifiction "Letter to a Super Hurrah" by alatefeline and "A Letter to a Young Fan from a Super Hurrah" by siliconshaman so read those first to understand the character dynamics."Tales Out of School"
Week 5, Day 5
Ashley had discovered something
new and interesting to do with her time.
She couldn't go to an ordinary school anymore,
unless she wore her iso-suit with its tight,
scratchy seams. SPAZMAT had brought in
an educational consultant who was such a dork
that Ashley felt tempted to tuck him behind her
to protect him from the jocks and the bullies.
Kent Authement had coaxed out her interests in
the macabre, which wasn't hard, but he'd also
discovered her taste for certain branches of
classic literature and other things deeply buried.
He even talked Ashley into enrolling
in Zydeco, a cyberschool for people who
couldn't attend ordinary classes or else
found them somehow insufficient.
To her surprise, Ashley enjoyed it, not only
because the quirky classes intrigued her but also
because the school seemed to be a grease-trap
for every geek, freak, goth, and weirdo in Easy City.
When everyone was that strange,
she just didn't stand out much.
Even though people asked Ashley about
berettaflies approximately as often as ever,
the questions were more about what their guts
looked like (which she didn't know; the dissection
hadn't been published yet) and what it was like
to see in the ultraviolet (which she couldn't explain).
So when Ashley began getting fanmail from
an odd little babygoth, it was only natural
that Ashley told Kaytee about Zydeco.
A while later, Kaytee popped up in
the chatlounge where students could
hang out between their classes.
Ashley: Hey, you made it! What
classes are you taking here?
Kaytee: Macabre Art and Making Friends.
Mom says I have to take one postal class
for every creepy class. Today we drew
a rackoon skull and and a gator.
Ashley struggled to figure out the meaning.
Oh, probably prosocial, that made sense.
Ashley: People say it's good to stay balanced.
I'm taking Easy City Cemeteries and SPOON History.
Want something cool for your art class to draw?
Kaytee: Sure, what is it?
Ashley: My science friends found
another berettafly, dead, and took photos.
They'll be in tomorrow's news but I got copies
this afternoon if folks want to draw them.
She uploaded an image.
Kaytee: AW SOME!1!
Ashley was used to being lonely,
to hiding from people who said one thing
but meant another and kept trying to edit
her reality until it didn't fit her anymore.
She wasn't used to being popular,
to people crowding around her to see
what she brought and saying how cool it was
but she thought, secretly, it was kinda neat.
* * *
NOTES:
Kent Authement -- He has tawny-fair skin, brown eyes, and short dark hair that is receding. He wears a mustache and beard. He wears glasses. He speaks English, Spanish, and Cajun French. Kent works as an educational consultant in Easy City, helping high school and college students to plan their coursework and adults to make plans for continuing education. He also teaches at Zydeco, an online school open to soups, gifted students, disabled people, and others for whom conventional school is inaccessible or unsuitable. The classes offered are decidedly eclectic, with students sorted into them based more on interest and ability than on age.
Qualities: Good (+2) Educational Consultant, Good (+2) Energetic, Good (+2) Fandom Is a Way of Life, Good (+2) Outgoing, Good (+2) Smart
Poor (-2) Such a Dork
* * *
Cyberschool is a popular option for disabled, gifted, or other students who find conventional schools inaccessible or insufficient. T-America adds superpowers to that list. Children who cannot attend regular schools are entitled to help from a home teacher. Adults in the same position get what is called an educational consultant instead, since adults are in charge of their own educational choices.
Zydeco -- Pronounced “zi-de-co” a kind of Cajun dance music that is a combination of traditional Cajun music, mixed with R&B, and African blues.
-- Cajun French Language Dictionary
Macabre art features grotesque and/or funerary motifs. See a gallery. While many of Zydeco's classes are generic such as Making Friends, a lot of them focus on quirky local interests such as cemeteries.
Rose butterflies such as the crimson rose and common rose are components of the berettaflies. They share similarities in the black-and-red body with black-red-white wings. A distinctive fieldmark of the berettaflies not shared by the roses is that berettaflies have a red spot on at the ends of their wingtails. This post about a butterfly garden shows a common rose lying dead on the path, similar to what the scientists found and Ashley shared.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Thoughts
Date: 2016-09-07 11:35 pm (UTC)Wish they had schools like that in this world when I was going to high school. It sounds very informative and fun.
It's nice to see Ashley get to try new things, experiment, see what she wants out of life.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2016-09-08 12:44 am (UTC)Yeah, I needed something like that starting when I was around six, which is when I'm sure I was reading adult books.
>> It's nice to see Ashley get to try new things, experiment, see what she wants out of life. <<
Yay! I'm glad that works for you. I think this will help her figure out what she wants to do, rather than just getting swept along.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2016-09-08 03:45 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2016-09-08 07:35 pm (UTC)I used to run one. For several years I was the Dean of Studies at the Grey School of Wizardry. It was fun while it lasted.
Zydeco is kind of a collage of what I learned about running an online school, the kind of community classes that are open to everyone, and a good program for gifted people. It's eclectic, free-wheeling, and full of geeks. The online interface means that many people who have difficulty socializing in facetime are much more outgoing in cyberspace. It's also very easy to teach a subject to a diverse class of students because you can just make a list of assignments that help them learn in different ways. You can cover all the learning modes, intelligences, and a range of age/mastery levels. You get students helping each other, which is a much better way of learning than segregating everyone by year or whatever. I've seen some great relationships where a younger student and older student latched onto each other, and ideally, each person will have an older mentor and a younger protegee, so that the whole student body weaves itself together over time.
Why?
Date: 2016-09-07 11:56 pm (UTC)thanks Nerdist!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeYfIv5s10A
Re: Why?
Date: 2016-09-08 12:21 am (UTC)Some superpowers are passed down through families. These tend to manifest at birth, at puberty, or grow in slowly; what we might call natural manifestations.
Some people instead have latent potential, which can be activated by severe trauma. This is traumatic manifestation. Many mutagens, whether chemical or energetic, have a tendency to cause ruinous amounts of damage. Thus, they often sicken or kill many victims.
People with the right genes, which allow them to survive and use chromothripsis to reconstruct themselves in positive (or at least survivable) ways, are luckier. Evolution is usually blind, which is why dinging up DNA causes cancer and birth defects. The changes are usually bad. But certain genes enable a kind of 'smart editing' which favors constructive changes.
Epigenetics is about changes during a lifetime which cause some genes to turn off or on. These changes may be passed down to offspring. So a baby carried by a highly stressed mother could adapt to anticipate a hard life and call on genetic resources to survive that. For soups, it's a matter of turning on the genes that enable their superpowers. You can see interesting effects from this in crayon soups especially, where some of them are expressing two or more colors in different areas like a particolored cat.
It's nice to know I'm not the only nerd who thinks about the science behind superpowers.
Re: Why?
Date: 2016-09-08 01:03 am (UTC)Re: Why?
Date: 2016-09-08 01:08 am (UTC)Re: Why?
Date: 2016-09-08 01:23 am (UTC)soaking will help!
I still think that part of the irritation factor for her skin lies with some of those merge lines between human and herp. being junctional, which could effectively 'thin' the covering of underlying tissues over and around associated nerve endings in the skin and cause sensitivity and possibly pain when something like directional pressure or stimulation is applied...
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-08 12:49 am (UTC)I need to check some dates and maybe chat with you and siliconshaman to figure out exactly where she is enrolled and in what. I think she's been in a school setting but also gets a lot of extracurricular support...high visual and verbal and naturalistic skills, but lower emotional, interpersonal, and possibly also struggles with math /except/ when it isn't presented as 'math.' I think. What do you think?
I noticed you referred to "mom" where I had referred to "mama." Is Kaytee trying to be cooler, does she use both interchangeably, or does it change depending on format? Maybe she's switched if people are using the shorter/commoner phrase. Hmmm...
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-08 04:33 am (UTC)Zydeco dancing. Cajun and zydeco dance, however, are very distinct from each other. I can do Cajun dance, but zydeco puts way too much torque on my knees!
It will probably also do Kaytee some good to socialize with adults who accept her, since she's very bright. It will give her more self-confidence and internal bracing, which will carry over into her regular school situation.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-08 10:26 am (UTC)It occurs to me that Kent is probably not the first nerd that Ashley's felt protective of. Sounds like the sort of thing that would happen in high school.
and Kaytee is triggering all the Big Sister instincts that Ashley has...
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-08 04:11 pm (UTC)«that Ashley felt tempted to tuck him behind her
to protect him from the jocks and the bullies.»
is metaphorical, yes? since there's no physical (col)location.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-09-08 06:58 pm (UTC)Well...
Date: 2016-09-08 07:39 pm (UTC)Yes...
Date: 2016-09-08 07:24 pm (UTC)Re: Yes...
Date: 2016-09-08 08:49 pm (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2016-09-08 09:06 pm (UTC):D
>> It occurs to me that Kent is probably not the first nerd that Ashley's felt protective of. Sounds like the sort of thing that would happen in high school. <<
That makes sense.
>> and Kaytee is triggering all the Big Sister instincts that Ashley has...<<
Awww!
some further detail
Date: 2016-09-08 04:16 pm (UTC)zy·de·co \ˈzī-də-ˌkō\ (The three syllables rhyme with the syllables of "Idaho".)
Full Definition of zydeco
1. : popular music of southern Louisiana that combines tunes of French origin with elements of Caribbean music and the blues and that features guitar, washboard, and accordion
audio file of pronunciation