wednes | I changed my mind, no one can read my new story...

Thanks to

lirrin for hipping me to this story about a high school kid charged with a crime for, you guessed it, writing a story.

The assignment?
Write whatever comes to mind, don't censor yourself.
So the kid wrote a bloody little stabby story with some necrophilia thrown in.
Offensive and disturbing? Sure.
A crime that will go on this young man's permanent record? No fucking way.

Like most of you, I am horrified that these awful school shootings are being used as an excuse to arrest children because we're uncomfortable with what they're thinking/writing about. If anybody read my new story they'd haul my ass off, except that I'm not a high school kid and I'd be screaming bloody murder about it (pun intended). Stories do not make people die. Literature is powerful, but even Mein Kampf didn't harm anyone in and of itself.

Charging this kid with a crime is no way to help him, or anybody else. It will not "teach him a lesson" except perhaps that the cops are f'd up and the school won't back you even if you do exactly what you are told. If anything, it will make him exponentially more angry than he was when he wrote the damn thing.

So let's all chill the fuck out, get that kid some counseling and move on about the business of rooting out real crimes and perpetrators who are actually hurting people.

And now, I'm off to read that Richard Bachman book about the kid who takes the classroom hostage. Then I'll write more horror about the dumb guy who kills young girls because he's sad that they don't love him. It's chilling. Hope I don't get charged with you know...writing it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A couple of years ago now, there was a high-profile case where a U of M student went to jail (I think he was indeed convicted) for writing a story where he stalked, raped and killed the person he sent the story to.

That guy used to roleplay with us at the Michigan Union.

I think that's a bit different. If you make it about a person and then send it to them, you're probably trying to create a threatening atmosphere.

There was also that kid from down south who wrote a zombie story set in his school. He was expelled.

Incidents like this always freak me out because...35 years ago, I WAS that kid! I used to write and draw the most gruesome and revolting stuff! Fortunately, the teachers' collective attitude was: "Pffff! It's just Paul! He's being creative." I see this zero-tolerance stuff happening and I think I'm incredibly lucky people had a little more common sense when I was growing up.

I'm at a loss to figure out how to correct this sorta cowardly lunacy.

It's baffling that anyone would think this was a good idea. It just smacks of "we've got to do...something" but they've no idea what, so they just persecute the first kid that makes them uncomfortable.

I know what you mean, I was that kid as well. I can't remember a time when I wasn't writing either suicidal emo crap, or homicidal...emo crap. I can't imagine how I might have turned out if I'd been charged with the "crime" of writing something scary. I bet I wouldn't be getting published.

Well, first there's the irony of him being refused enlistment in the Marines because he wrote a violent story about killing people. Ahem.

And then the comment the school spokesman saying the story was inappropriate because it was a matter of safety. Did anyone think that just maybe he was trying to process the grief and fear he was feeling over the VT shootings (if that was the case)? Maybe the teacher could have talked to him first before throwing him to the wolves?

Idiots.

Right, a matter of "safety." So they can save the student body from people expressing themselves creatively.

Those poor kids.

I didn't catch the Marine thing first time around. That would be funny if it wasn't so awful and sad.

Certainly it would be more sensible to go out and catch the dumb guys who are killing young girls rather than punish the people who merely write stories about dumb guys who kill young girls.

Usually people who become published fiction authors didn't just start writing once they hit legal adulthood, did they? They'll have been exercising their imaginations and writing since they were very young.

So we have Stephen King, Dean Koontz, et al. writing about horrific crimes and becoming famous, popular, and wealthy from it ... but I have never heard that anyone assumes or even suspects that they're murderers or sadists in real life.

I feel sorry for these kids. Sure, some of them probably would do very well to have therapy and probably need it, but the way this is being handled, I have to agree ... this kid is gonna just get more angry and bitter. I sure would. This treatment is probably far more likely to cause the very problems they're supposedly trying to prevent.

Totally. Good points, all.

I just don't understand the logic behind what they're doing, and I hope they leave this kid the hell alone.

The ACLU is all over it.

Student kicked out of school for writing a violently disturbing essay in which no one is threatened.

I kinda figured they would be.

It's especially ironic that the teacher actually said "there will be no judgment and no censorship" and then did the exact opposite.

I changed my mind, no one can read my new story...

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Hope I don't get charged with you know...writing it.

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