Slash Work - 2. Rewritten History/I WILL Make It Work!

Chapter 2: Rewritten History/I WILL Make It Work!

Huh. So my story seemed to have produced a couple of reviews from readers. I say “huh,” even though in reality I was screaming with joy. I GOT REVIEWS!!! PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ IT! AND THEY LIKED IT! I didn’t get a mountain of reviews, but I wasn’t expecting that much anyway. I actually expected NO ONE to review it. So, suffice to say, I am really happy right now.

I got one from a reviewer named “Nanna Manners,” which I’m assuming means that she’s a forty-year-old mom who’s very strict on her children and secretly likes gay fiction (even ones WITHOUT vampires!), and she doesn’t tell anyone about it. She said she loved the story. That’s it. Well, I wasn’t expecting glowing praise. At least she reviewed in the first place!

I got another review from “Phlegm” (the humor or the mucus?). Who would name themselves after snot? Anyways, she also found the story to be interesting. However, she had beef with one of my more…anti-woman comments. Though every woman probably had issues with that, and I just don’t fucking care, so I’m not going to bother dwelling on it. If she’s got problems NOW, just wait until she reads more. And where does she get “blood” from? There wasn’t a drop of it in the entire chapter!

Those were the only reviews I got so far. I’m hoping for more. Better ones. Something glowingly positive. Maybe it just takes awhile for people to read these things. There are time zones and all. Still, I got two effing reviews (mediocre as they may be)! If I didn’t know that the landlord would throw me out because of it, I would scream like a giddy schoolgirl and throw a loud party to celebrate. Or go drinking! LOTS of drinking. Even though I’m not of legal age just yet. Will November never come?

So, yeah. I got my inspiration. I got my groupies backing me up (they’re officially groupies now, right?). So I guess I should get started on that next chapter. Even though I SHOULD be doing my homework right now. And it’s, like, 9PM, which only further illustrates the fact that I should be doing homework right now. But I can’t! I got reviews! I got a story to write right now! Education and the possibility of getting a high paying job in the future can wait.

I decided to tweak things around a little. I originally planned on the first chapter starting on a Friday, allowing me to go right into the weekend, but I altered that. I never explicitly said that the day was set on a Friday, so readers won’t notice. I moved the story back a few days so that the first chapter is set on a Monday. So now it’s Tuesday in the story. I’m glad that I made the setting a high school and not a college. In high school, you get the same classes every day, so I don’t have to spend a whole chapter talking about nothing, waiting for the next day to come. You get to see each character every day, instead of every other day. It’s a shame that I can’t see certain guys every day, though.

Another thing I decided on was that I AM going to make Guy A a fellow jock. Hopefully I know enough about football (or can fake it well enough) to make the whole story seem legit. I already bookmarked the Wikipedia page on my web account. The hard part is going to be coming up with full football games. You can’t have a story about two football jocks falling in love without having them in at least one game. I’ll also have to buff up Guy A. Hopefully I won’t overdo it and cause readers to think I made a completely new personality for him. Readers don’t like that. I don’t like that.

I worked diligently on the second chapter for about two hours. Actually, before I knew it, it was 11PM and I realized that I HAD to do my homework at some point. But I was on a roll right now! I was “in the moment” with the story. Things seemed to be flowing out of my fingertips. I didn’t want to stop it now! But my grades...

Oh? What’s this? I got mail! I quickly clicked on the icon and read the heading. “You’ve got a new review for ‘Shooting Stars Collide’!” Okay, I know it isn’t the most coherent title out there, but I was seriously drawing a blank there! I didn’t know what else to call the story that didn’t sound overly cheesy or unoriginal. Plus, I didn’t know that Guy A was going to be a jock at the time. Anyway, what does the review say? It’s from “J. Caesar” (real original there, dude), whom I’m taking it is a guy. Hey, a guy’s actually ON this site! And is reviewing MY story! Whoo-hoo! Us dudes have to stick together, you know. Especially in a place like this. Oh, yeah, the review. He thought it was AWESOME. He’s completely bedazzled as to why this is. There, there…it’s nothing to be afraid of. Come, bask in my greatness. Drink from my goblet of perfection. Revel in it. Live it. Also, he said that it had promise.

...HELL YES!!! I got an actually positive and constructive review! And this one said that it has promise! Is that awesome or what?! I think I’m starting to like this story. Granted, I never wrote a serial before. All I’ve ever written is one-shot stuff, and on a different site as well. And those didn’t turn out so good either. Not many hits, reviews, or anything else. It was like no one was reading anything I posted, simply because they were only one chapter long. I wasn’t really expecting anything different here. A story I might actually continue, on a different site, probably wouldn’t yield anything more than what I’m used to. So far though, I’ve gotten more reviews in a shorter amount of time than I ever got before. I certainly never got a review saying that something I wrote had promise.

Reluctantly, I closed everything down and went to work on those pesky homework assignments. Grrr...don’t those teachers know that I have a legacy to write?! Oh god, I think I’m letting it all go to my head. Oh well. I’m still new here; I’ll let myself experience this good feeling for a little while longer. Ha, people are going to think I got laid or something.

~~~

Tuesdays and Thursdays are generally easier for me. I have less classes, which means less work. However, being the genius that I am (sarcasm), I still have to wake up before dawn to get to my first class. I still can’t remember what I was on that made me think that I should modify my schedule so that I would wake up at the same time every day, five days a week. Like I said, no sense of foresight.

With what I’m sure is the only documented case of a 20-year-old male with crow’s feet on his face, I begrudgingly made my way to my Political Science class. Which SUCKS by the way. I, in no way, need this class as part of my major requirement. It’s just something the university does to keep us here longer, so that we’ll give them more of our money. What do they think we college kids are? Made out of money? Plus, this class is one of those lecture classes, which means that there’s 300 plus students in the class, so it’s not like the professor’s going to care about each and every one of us individually. There’s not even a hot guy in there for me to stare at!

Wait! Hello there. And who might you be? I haven’t seen you in this class before. You just transferred here? Or were you just sitting elsewhere up until now? Hey! Look at me! Look. Over. HERE! I WANT TO SEE YOUR CHISELED FACE, DAMMIT! Fine! Be that way. I think you look ugly anyway.

...Okay, not really. I think you look hot. But would you at least look this way? Thinking someone looks hot just by looking at the side of their face is kind of creepy. Just a little. I’d lick the grime off your shoes if you actually came over here.

Suddenly, the mysterious guy starts walking my way.

Wait. What? I didn’t mean it! I don’t want to lick your shoe’s grime! That’s disgusting! I was only joking! You know you have a hideous mole on the side of your face? I was kidding about the grime-licking! Don’t you comprende?

The guy scoots past me and sits on the opposite side of the classroom. I think his friends relocated without his knowledge. Is this guy worth putting into my story? The Two-Face guy. Remarkable on one side, glaring mole of the highest ugliness on the other. Great, now every time I see him, I’ll imagine him in a duo-colored suit. Maybe flipping a quarter as well. I hope you can hear my thoughts! That’s what I think of you now! I should start eating breakfast again.

During my Tuesdays and Thursdays here, I have an hour break between classes. So luckily, this gives me time to work on my story. Also on my side is the fact that I only have two classes on these days. Between the three I have on the other days and these two, it’d be suicide to take any more classes than I already have. So basically, I get back to my apartment, completely free for the rest of the day (unless I work that night), before most students wake up.

Normally, before I started this whole “story making” thing, I’d use whatever free time I had surfing the Internet. Now I use it for...well, the whole “story making” thing. I got onto one of the campus computers and checked my email, like the crazed email addict that I am. I have one new message. And it’s another review! Sweet! My story must be the most popular story on that site right now!

From “Mother Acorn” (do people seriously not know how to make a semi-normal screen name?): Insightful.

Well. That was…informative. No seriously, what the fuck is that shit? If you can be bothered to hit the “review” button, then you can muster the effort to write more than one Goddamn word! It’s not that hard! If you can’t even do THAT, then don’t bother reviewing at all. It’s a waste of computer space, and it insinuates that you feel as though you’re obligated to “technically” send a review (which “technically” only has to consist of one word). I don’t need your “pity review.” Go back to Start, you fucking moron, and try again.

Not that I’m going to delete the review. More reviews, even shitty ones like this, trick people into thinking that my story’s good.

Okay, that review made me angrier than I had anticipated. But, I need to keep going with this story and complete it. Deep breaths. Think about your happy place. No, not the high school locker room after practice, the other one!

I sat down in a quiet area with my story notebook and opened it up. Then I just started jotting down every plot point I could think of. Anything that I could possibly include in the story, I wrote down. It didn’t matter if the point was cliché or not, or whether it had been done to death already or not. I was determined to write a good story!

Which was why I didn’t hear him walking up to me.

“Yo, Nick!” he slapped my head. “Are you in dreamland or what?”

I spun around to see who was assaulting me and smiled.

“Dude, shouldn’t you be working on that project of yours?” I replied back.

“Dude, shut the hell up,” he laughed.

“So what are you doing here, Chad? I thought you had class right now.”

“Man, that’s what’s sweet about college, bro! Classes cancel! I got the next, like, hour to relax and do nothing!”

“That’s cool, I guess. So you decided to spend it giving me a concussion?”

“Duh! What else would I do?”

“Something productive? I don’t know.”

“Dude, as much as I would love to go to the rec center right now and lift some weights, that’s, like, all the way on the other side of campus. And I don’t want to walk from here all the way over there, only to have about twenty minutes of free time before having to head back here.”

“Fine. I suppose I can let you stay here for awhile.”

“Dude! It’s not like you OWN the place.”

Now here was a problem. If Chad stayed here, then I obviously couldn’t write more into my story. He’s bound to ask what I’m writing about. If I shoo Chad away, firstly, he wouldn’t take me seriously. Secondly, then I would have less time to spend with the lug. Why am I constantly dealt these difficult decisions? I figured that since he wouldn’t buy into me trying to get rid of him, I might as well let him stay and eat up my free time. I nonchalantly hid the notebook from him and continued to make conversation.

Before I knew it, the hour went by. I had to break our highly intellectual conversation over whether Batman could kick Superman’s ass or vice-versa (more sarcasm; I’m rolling in it). As I said my goodbye and left for class, an idea popped into my head. What if I had Chad help me with this story? He’d obviously be able to help make the characters sound more believable, more masculine. He’d be able to tell me all the intricacies of football. Sure, I’d leave out the whole “gay” thing. And the “gay sex” thing, if I ever decide to do that. As of right now, the only way I can get my characters to sound masculine is to throw “yo,” “dude,” and “man” in just about every sentence they speak. I mean, guys talked like that in high school. They should talk like that everywhere else, right?

Well, I had another boring class after my little chat with Chad. I swear, the system went out of its way to ensure that I would HAVE to take the most boring classes ever, and to add salt to that injury, couple it with the most boring professors as well. I was on the verge of sleeping throughout the entire class period, even though I just had a stimulating conversation with one of my best friends since coming here. Had some good daydreams though. Though I doubt I could recall what the professor was talking about the entire time.

Now about that story. As soon as I got home, I systematically forgot every single thing I learned today and focused on reworking Guy A. I went back to the first chapter and looked at what sort of personality I established him with thus far. Good, not too much will be damaged by the revamping. First off, I needed to give him a buffer physique. Not too hard. I put a gym excursion scene into the second chapter. Football players do treadmill exercises, right? That led me to check out the football page on Wikipedia. God I love that site. I still don’t see why professors won’t let you use it for a source. Most of the information on there (especially on the academic topics like wars and stuff) IS accurate, at least when coupled with other sources online. But I forgot that there are different types of football, as other countries' version of football is our soccer. So THAT search led me to the American football page. And that STILL didn’t tell me anything about training. So I’ll just assume that football players, with all the running they have to do, do lots of treadmill running in addition to their regular training.

With that out of the way, I needed him to somehow indicate that he was already on the football team, since I’m too lazy to type up a “trying out for the team” scene. Simple enough. Just add a passing statement claiming that his football uniform was “airing out in the corner of my room” due to its sweaty, teenaged stench it harbored. It just wasn’t laundry day yet, that’s all.

Now what position does he play? I don’t want to go with the all-too-common star quarterback of the team. It seems like every quarterback in a high school football team in the nation is either gay or highly homophobic (because he’s secretly gay). Gah, now I have to go back online and look up that stupid website again! I should bookmark the new page as well. Hey...when did this new email appear? I was only gone for, like, five minutes. Probably spam. I hate spam. If only the lies they tell you were true. Oh? Another review? I’m elated as usual, but I have to admit that the feeling is starting to go down.

This time from the “Comedian” (well, speaking of semi-normal screen names…), who thought it was an interesting chapter. He (‘cause a female would be “comedienne”) is looking forward to how the story plays out, and how the characters will grow throughout the process of telling said story. You know what? That’s actually a pretty good review. It’s not showering me with praise and riches (because I could really use the “riches” right about now…stupid tuition), but it’s telling me that he thinks it has potential. If I can win him over with this next chapter, I’m sure to have him for life (or whenever the story actually ends)!

And why stop with him?! I can do better than that! I’ve read enough trashy fics by now to write something so beautiful, tears come out of babies still in the womb! I’m going to make this the best damn story this site’s ever seen! I’m going to turn guys GAY because this story’s so good! So by the time it comes around to writing out a sex scene, I’ll have plenty of “personal experience” in that field to draw from! Haha! I am TOTALLY liking this story now!