This was a good comment. It had me thinking all thorough dinner about this poem.
There's so much we don't know here. We get a very brief reference to people getting sick--this party was not a private event. It was a "wild party", so there were a lot of people there, both fraternity brothers and others. The others were likely nearly all women students at the college. Lots of people got sick, so presumably that includes a lot of the women too, not just fraternity brothers. Some of the people never regained their health. The aftermath of the party would have been very public indeed, with police and doctors involved in trying to figure out who spiked the punch and what with. How many other people developed super powers? How many non-students snuck in? I'm betting that at least one person asserted that the fraternity was innocent, that some supervillain snuck in and spiked the punch.
I'm wondering why they allowed the fraternity to remain on campus at all. There has to have been a big stink about all of this, and likely the "take gender and sexuality studies or leave" was some kind of horrible compromise, not just something dreamed up by some anonymous administrator. It's certainly not something that anyone at the college would be happy about, but at least it wouldn't be a surprise to the other people in the gender and sexuality studies program that the remaining members of the fraternity are there. It would probably be a matter of debate how many of them were creepy dudebros and how many were just as much victims as the women attendees of that party.
Still, I bet that in addition to feeling isolated from his parents and fraternity brothers because he knows (or believes) they will not accept him coming out, he is also feeling isolated because his classmates, in the new minor and elsewhere, are looking at his socially awkward self and the fear at least some of them can see, and not imagining that he's hiding a normal thing like being gay. I would expect some of them are avoiding him because they fear that he's hiding being the person (or one of the people) who spiked the punch. If people see him exhibiting superpowers, that could intensify that suspicion, especially if the punch didn't give lots of the victims such aftereffects, or at least if people don't know that the punch gave some of the victims superpowers.
And he is certainly socially awkward and lacking significantly in awareness of the people around him and their emotions. This poem is written from his POV, and what he doesn't notice about the big hullabaloo happening around him makes me pretty sure he was never neurotypical, even before the potion caused or triggered his superpowers.
I wholeheartedly support prompts to hear more about Sam and about other people affected by this incident. I enjoyed watching his poor clueless self start to grow up and get some clues.
no subject
There's so much we don't know here. We get a very brief reference to people getting sick--this party was not a private event. It was a "wild party", so there were a lot of people there, both fraternity brothers and others. The others were likely nearly all women students at the college. Lots of people got sick, so presumably that includes a lot of the women too, not just fraternity brothers. Some of the people never regained their health. The aftermath of the party would have been very public indeed, with police and doctors involved in trying to figure out who spiked the punch and what with. How many other people developed super powers? How many non-students snuck in? I'm betting that at least one person asserted that the fraternity was innocent, that some supervillain snuck in and spiked the punch.
I'm wondering why they allowed the fraternity to remain on campus at all. There has to have been a big stink about all of this, and likely the "take gender and sexuality studies or leave" was some kind of horrible compromise, not just something dreamed up by some anonymous administrator. It's certainly not something that anyone at the college would be happy about, but at least it wouldn't be a surprise to the other people in the gender and sexuality studies program that the remaining members of the fraternity are there. It would probably be a matter of debate how many of them were creepy dudebros and how many were just as much victims as the women attendees of that party.
Still, I bet that in addition to feeling isolated from his parents and fraternity brothers because he knows (or believes) they will not accept him coming out, he is also feeling isolated because his classmates, in the new minor and elsewhere, are looking at his socially awkward self and the fear at least some of them can see, and not imagining that he's hiding a normal thing like being gay. I would expect some of them are avoiding him because they fear that he's hiding being the person (or one of the people) who spiked the punch. If people see him exhibiting superpowers, that could intensify that suspicion, especially if the punch didn't give lots of the victims such aftereffects, or at least if people don't know that the punch gave some of the victims superpowers.
And he is certainly socially awkward and lacking significantly in awareness of the people around him and their emotions. This poem is written from his POV, and what he doesn't notice about the big hullabaloo happening around him makes me pretty sure he was never neurotypical, even before the potion caused or triggered his superpowers.
I wholeheartedly support prompts to hear more about Sam and about other people affected by this incident. I enjoyed watching his poor clueless self start to grow up and get some clues.