#chapter 2.3

[shironezuninja]

I’m thinking about splitting up my 2.3 Trial Of Commitment Side Story into 3 Parts. Takes place in between Chapters 2 and 3.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

End of Insinuation 2.3

That was a pretty decent chapter. Didn’t lead anywhere with the Tattletale plot just yet (which it helpfully indicated at the beginning that it wouldn’t), but instead we got some juicy high school drama plot. We also got to meet a few of Taylor’s other classmates: Sparky the probable drug addict who’s just... there, and Greg the relatable ADHD kid who might not be 1′ tall.

I feel like the high school drama is a lot more bearable at this point in the story, and while that might be in part because I got a bad first impression that colored my view of 1.1, I do think it’s also because I now know Taylor. For the first half of 1.1, I had no real reason to care about what happened to Taylor yet, other than standard pity for a fictional bullying victim. Now, in 2.3, I’ve become invested in Taylor as a character, and her interactions with the bullies actually feel like they matter.

Another thing about this chapter is how relatable the characters were - specifically Taylor as a fellow asocial introvert and Greg as a fellow ADHD kid. I guess you guys learned a lot about me this chapter, huh.

Anyway, next time, I guess we’ll see what sort of hell these nine girls are about to bring down on Taylor in her lunch break. See ya there!

(...nine? The Fellowship of the Bitch)

[krixwell-liveblogs]

What made things worse was that I then got to watch Madison rattle off my very impressive sounding list of ways capes had changed the world.

For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that this was what they were going to do with Taylor’s list.

But hey, at least it’s kind of a compliment? That they think it’s good enough to steal and present as theirs. Obviously it’s still a dick move; I’m just looking for a silver lining. Turn a negative into a positive, as Taylor was going on about in 1.1 and 1.6.

She cribbed almost all of my stuff; fashion, economics, Tinkers and the tech boom, the fact that movies, television and magazines had been tweaked to accommodate cape celebrities, and so on.

The tech boom is another great example of Wildbow being just like Taylor in that he thinks things through to their logical conclusions. Have a category of heroes capable of creating extremely advanced tech? Naturally some of those are going to let others study, learn from and adapt the tech of the future to new tech of today.

And I guess superhero movies are a bit easier to make if you can get an actual super to play the main character.

Still, she got it wrong when explaining how law enforcement had changed.  My point had been that with qualified capes easing the workload and taking over for most high profile crises, law enforcement of all stripes were more free to train and expand their skill sets, making for smarter, more versatile cops.

What did I just say! Wildbow really thinks these things through. It makes for quite a believable world.

Madison just made it sound like they got a lot of vacation days.

That kind of thinking could be harmful. If the people start saying “Why are we paying taxes for the police to take vacations?”, politicians might reduce the police’s freedom to train.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

While the class got sorted, I figured I’d avoid standing around like a loser with no group to join

Do I have a bullseye painted on me?

and get something else out of the way. I approached the desk at the front of the room.

Hm... what’s up? Can’t be telling him that she hasn’t done the homework, because why should he care when it was optional?

“Mr. Gladly?”

“Call me Mr. G.  Mr. Gladly is my dad,” he informed me with a sort of mock sternness.

That’s... not how that works. Ew.

This guy is a bit cringy so far, to be honest, and I think that’s exactly how Wildbow meant to portray him.

“Sorry, uh, Mr. G.  I need a new textbook.”

He gave me a curious look, “What happened to your old one?”

Oh, right, that issue. For all that I said about the books during the dousing and Taylor’s fit of rage, I kind of forgot that her textbooks were ruined too.

Soaked with grape juice by a trio of harpies.  “I lost it,” I lied.

Harpies, that’s a good term to apply to the trio. Very fitting. Maybe I’ll start calling them that instead of the Bitches; we’ll see.

“Replacement textbooks are thirty five dollars.  I don’t expect it now, but…”

“I’ll have it for you by the end of the week,” I finished for him.

*quick currency conversion*

Yeah, seems fair. Over here, we borrow the books from the school without paying anything, but if they do get lost or destroyed, we have to pay for the replacement. $35 is within a reasonable range for that.

How many replacement books is Taylor going to have to buy, though? That dousing’s gonna get expensive.

Taylor losses: - Books worth potentially hundreds of dollars - Thus far unknown art project - Two periods of school - Dining peace - Dignity

Bitch losses: - Several bottles of soda and juice - Seven emus

[krixwell-liveblogs]

It was stuff like this that made Mr. Gladly my least favorite teacher.  I got the impression he’d be surprised to hear he was anyone’s least favorite teacher, but that was just one more point against him in my book.

I think many teachers would be at least a little surprised to hear that, honestly, and then a little bit hurt. I get the sense that the surprise Taylor thinks Mr. Gladly would express is from not being on the other end of the scale, though, and on that point I agree with Taylor.

Arrogance is an ugly trait.

I don’t think he comprehended why people might not like him, or how miserable group work was when you didn’t identify with any of the groups or cliques in the school.

fucking

PREACH

He just figured people liked doing group work because it let them talk and hang out with their friends in class.

I mean it’s true, but far from universally. If you have friends and are socially inclined.

Seriously, I relate to Taylor so much on this topic. I’ve grown to be quite asocial at school, forming most of my true friendships online. I’m still on good terms with people around me and consider a bunch of them “friends”, but I’m not really part of their clique. I’ve become... distant.

ANYWAY,

[krixwell-liveblogs]

Mr. Gladly named another group as the winners, by virtue of the sheer number of things they had come up with, though he made a point of saying the quality of Madison’s work was nearly good enough to count.  From there, he moved on to his lecture.

Quantity over quality. Sigh.

I mean obviously I didn’t want Madison to win, but y’know...

I was steamed and I could hardly focus on the lecture, as my power crackled and tugged at my attention from the periphery of my consciousness, making me acutely aware of every bug within a tenth of a mile.

Boom, superpower plot!

Hm. We’ve got a heroine whose power becomes a bit less controllable when she’s angry... and who’s got hints of anger issues like her dad’s... yeah, this is probably boiling over some day.

Rule of three?

I could tune it out, but the extra concentration that took, coupled with the anger I felt towards Madison and Mr. Gladly, was distracting enough that I couldn’t focus on the lecture.

TFW when thousands of bugs keep distracting you from your World Issues lecture. #relatable

I took a cue from Sparky and put my head down on the desk.  Being as exhausted from the previous night’s activity as I was, it was all I could do to keep from dozing off.

Honestly, Mr. Gladly seems more and more incompetent. He’s got at least two students doing this now, and he’s not even trying to do anything worth mentioning about either.

Still, spending the class half asleep made it go by faster.  I was startled when the bell rang.

Where what who whuh?

[krixwell-liveblogs]

That was that.  Short of running to the teacher and complaining, I wasn’t going to get my work back, and anyone who considered that an option has clearly never been in high school.

Fair enough. It’s weird, but there is a kind of stigma around asking the teacher to intervene between students, I guess. Maybe it’s that it’s seen as admitting defeat, or childish because that’s what you’d do in elementary school.

Greg looked between me and the girls with a kind of panic before settling into a funk, Sparky had his head down on his desk, either asleep or close to it, and I was left fuming.

And of course, this means she can’t continue the work.

I made an attempt at trying to to salvage things, but getting Greg to focus was impossible, as he constantly tried to apologize and made lame attempts to convince the other group to give my work back.

Yeeah, he knows he fucked up, and now he’s too wrapped up in his guilt. Not very helpful, and that’ll probably just make him feel even worse later.

And that will keep churning in his head, because ADHD isn’t just an inability to focus. It’s also an inability to stop focusing on certain things, and if those things happen to be negative... that’s probably one of the reasons why ADHD people are prone to anxiety and depression.

ADHD is trivialized in media, but it can be brutal.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

“I didn’t get much done,” Greg said, “I got distracted by this new game I got and it is really really good, it’s called Space Opera, have you played it?”

Note the run-on sentence; a classic example of how to convey a character voice.

But yeah, Greg totally has ADHD.

A full minute later he was still on the same topic,

Oh, he hasn’t branched off into some vaguely related topic yet, while talking at those speeds? Really likes that game, then.

even though I wasn’t playing any attention to him or giving him any feedback on what he was saying,

I’ve been where Greg is now, except I was a bit younger. By Greg’s age, I had learned that people didn’t appreciate the ramblings, and gone way more silent.

“…you have to understand it’s a genre, and it’s one I’ve really been getting into it lately, since I started watching this anime called – Oh, hey, Julia!”

I’ve heard worse anime titles.

Greg broke off from his monologue to wave with enough energy and excitement that I felt a little embarrassed to just be sitting next to him.  I turned in my seat to see one of Madison’s friends coming in, late.

Oh no

And they’re supposed to be in groups of four

Shit.