#proper schooling

[storyunrelated]

If you pretend a problem doesn’t exist you don’t make the problem go away, but you do relieve yourself of the burden of acting as though there is a problem, which is basically the same thing.

- Proper Schooling

[storyunrelated]

There’s something in the water. And the air. And the soil. And the food. And the people.

- Proper Schooling

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“Anywhere would be better than here, surely? I mean, we’re at serious risk of death here, according to you. Anywhere would be an improvement. Wouldn’t it?”

She made a solid point. An annoyingly solid point.

- Proper Schooling

[storyunrelated]

Keeping up appearances could be very important sometimes, especially if your view of reality was based on making it up as you went along.

Proper Schooling

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Rip knew it wasn’t his fault. It couldn’t be. He hadn’t done anything wrong, he’d meant to do what he’d done, so nothing had gone wrong. But he was still oddly upset for reasons he couldn’t fully explain. He needed someone to yell at.

Proper Schooling

[storyunrelated]

Proper Schooling - QnA

Of course, reaching blindly out into the aether and expecting questions to come back to me was foolish. For questions to come I shall have to source them locally. And so, for that, they shall be provided by @sortyourlifeoutmate. Always happy to volunteer. Well, 'happy'.

So what is Proper Schooling?

Proper Schooling is an idea I've had in my head where several elements have stayed the same but many others have not and they've all just swilled around and none of has ever achieved anything substantial.

That doesn't actually answer my question. Bottom-line it for me.

There's a really, really big school. It's horrible and it's in a forest and it's full of lunatics. Main characters don't want to be in it anymore but events and obstacles conspire to make this difficult to achieve.

There, was that so hard? What's the main plot-thrust? Right now, at least?

What I just said. The main characters want to get out. But it's not as easy as all that, because everything they need is far away and everything keeps going wrong. And nothing makes any sense because the place is - as mentioned - infested with lunatics. In a world full of bastards. So runs the theory, anyway.

And who does it involve? Fling some dudes at me.

You got Nadir, the son designed to be a disappointment! You got Losel, the daughter who totally wasn't an accident but shouldn't exist anyway! Andrew, the boy thrown out of a plane for not being photogenic! Rip Van Reuyman, who is a house! 'Random' Johnson, who has official authority! Rembrandt Rembrandt, a girl much in demand! Maddy, the conglomerated daughter shoved into a mechanical body! And many more! Maybe.

Nice dudes. Howsabouts that setting?

Bowport Wood. Town-sized school that swallowed a village, sitting in a vast horizon-spanning forest. All the rest of the country started shoving their problem pupils there. Then their problem people. Then they realised that now they need Bowport Wood to keep them there, so Bowport Wood gets free reign to do basically whatever it wants. And it does.

What this implies about the world beyond Bowport Wood is left vague, but fairly obviously not positive.

Charming. Is there a message here? Some moral?

If you find one, I didn't put there on purpose.

What about, you know, themes? Or repeated elements?

Decay, random pointless violence, flippant responses to horrible situations, cybernetics, robots, implied cannibalism, smacking your clone sons around the head with a giant mechanical arm, infanticide, genetic engineering, legal wrangling, people being literally thrown to the wolves, the death of truth and the attempts of humans to enforce how they think the world should be onto how the world actually is etcetera, etcetera

Charming. So kid-friendly then?

Look, I don't know what kids read.

And what's the plan on how this is meant to be? Is this a novel or what? Fucking what?

I haven't got the foggiest fucking idea. Not helped by the fact that every five minutes my whole grasp of how the story is meant to play out changes. Right now - right today - I had a moment where I thought to myself "By Jove I've got it! I'll make a side-blog! And put it up in chunks! And have it all running as a constant, unfurling series of arcs! It'll be beautiful!" but then I came to my senses. That won't happen. Nothing will happen.

All a bit pointless then, really.

That's me all over.

I've come away from this learning nothing.

You're literally talking to yourself right now. You had all the answers to start with. This is basically just masturbating.

Eat a dick.

And the same to you.

[storyunrelated]

No terrible thing happens overnight. The worst of it might, but the buildup takes longer. Like something leaning and leaning and leaning before finally coming crashing down when no-one’s looking. The crashing is the part people don’t like, the part that makes the impact and the damage and all the noise, but the leaning was the bit they should have been paying attention to. The leaning was the bit where they might have done something to stop it.

Proper Schooling

[storyunrelated]

Society has marched on in the future (which is where we live) and attitudes have shifted. People have moved away from the rather backwards and primitive notion that life has some sort of intrinsic value and have settled on the far more rational and benign position that some lives are obstacles.

Proper Schooling