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Coralie had been staring at her paper for a long time now. A really long time. It was an odd thing, too, because she wasn't one to be lacking of responses, witty or otherwise. But this one was...tough. She began to chew on her lip, a habit she disapproved of greatly. Tapping her pencil against the paper she began to leave little black marks on the sheet's surface, but still no words. Why was this so hard?

Maybe it as because the question was what did fear look like to her. What made her scared. This, to Coralie, seemed a counter-productive question. No, it wasn't because she didn't have any fears or anything like that. But the things she was afraid of, well...did they really apply to scaring humans? On the top of her fear list were overly cute animals, glitter, rainbows, and perhaps a unicorn thrown in there (no the Literature professor didn't count quite so much since...he was grouchy and very un-unicorny). These, if anything, were things human kind generally adored. Just as she didn't understand their fear of a spider, her fear of happy sparkly things would not have made any sense to them. If that was what fear was, well, then they were all out of work; they'd never scare anyone.

So instead she tried to think of why those things scared her. They couldn't really do anything, right? Just like a little spider or batling couldn't really harm a human that badly. So why? Her paper was starting to look like it had been attacked by mites or something. Sighing, and realizing that his class was not going to be her forte', she wrote what she could, hoping it was good enough. She couldn't wait any longer...he wanted there answers!

Quote:

Fear is...that which we don't understand. Okay, that seems vague, but I don't understand why rainbows and confetti exist and they scare me a bit. Maybe it's just that way with everything. The things we can't make sense of scare us, because we can't put them in a neat little logical box and go "there! I got it!". Maybe its a bit of the unknown too. If you don't understand something, how can you predict what it'll do or what it can do? I'm not sure how this applies to glitter, though, but it might apply to other things. I mean maybe humans don't like flying toothy dragons because they don't know what they can do?

So fear looks like anything that we'd rather it not look like. Fear is the stuff we don't want to see and can't make sense of when we see it. It's the stuff we can't anticipate and prepare for.

Or it could just look like nothing. It's all in our heads. Something.

It was there Coralie gave up. She was fed up with this prompt, as she felt as if she was going in circles and it was giving her a mild headache, the way Wilfred did when he decided to sing bluegrass music. She folded the piece of paper and tossed it across one row of desks so that it landed in the professor's hat. It rolled a bit on the rim, too, almost falling out. Luckily it went in, so she could really say she was "done" even if she hadn't done a great job. Whatever.

Figg glared blankly down his paper for a long time, snaggled fang digging into his lip. He looked disdainful at the prospect of writing about not just fear, but what he was supposed to be afraid of. Was he even afraid of anything? He was supposed to be here to cause fear, not experience it -- and it made him have to suppress a groan to want to admit that he was afraid of anything.

But still, he began:

Remi got a narrowed sort of look as Professor Tailor took the hat from the desk and started to root through the pages; it was a look that promised all kinds of uncomfortable assignments and duties in the days to come.

He was methodical, leaving them to wiggle and watch as he sorted through the assignments and jotted down just a word or two for each one, notes that seemed important. He tossed them carelessly back into the hat, and then headed up to the board.

The profession spoke as he walked, chalk in one hand and hat tucked under the other. "Most of you are under the impression that we can't see Fear, and perhaps you have a point -- but not a point that's hopeful for this class. So we're going to work on visualization."

He wrote each student's name on the board, and drew random papers from the hat, adding a word or two beside each name as he worked until he had a full list:



Then he looked up, his eyebrows raised, and offered a flash of a smile. "No, these aren't your own phobias. Instead, you've been randomly given another student's definition of 'fear', of what they dread. For next class, I want you to find me a visualization of this fear. Anything you'd like -- just make it something we can see. I don't care if you draw it yourself or if you find something someone else has drawn, but it should be clear....and I might ask for justification."

With a roll of his hand, Professor Tailor slid the hat onto his head and stepped away from the board to grab the scarf off the back of his chair. "And with that, you can go. I'll see you Monday."



((You heard the man! Next class session will start on Monday, Nov 1 and for that class you need a visualization of the words next to your character's name. You can either draw it yourself or use mystical google-foo to locate it, anything you'd like.

Don't post your HW in this thread.
Wait until next class to post it.

For now, you can beat it out of the classroom as fast as you can or stick around to ask the teacher questions, if you have any. He'll hang out, and I'll try to reply promptly.))