Speculative Fiction: Reading and Writing About Alternate Worlds, or simply just spec fic, is a class offered at Duke Tip. It is entirely separate from the Creative Writing class, as it focuses in on a particular genre (Or umbrella, as Ms. Jackie calls it,) of writing. (Note: Creative Writing is also an amazing course for aspiring writers of all types. For further information, see Creative Writing at Trinity.) Speculative Fiction is simply a work that takes place in a world in which the laws are different from ours. (And It's the ABSOLUTE BEST class offered anywhere)

At Wake Forest

Term 1, 2016

This term consisted of:

• Alex
• Anabelle
• Brice
• Charlie
• Clare
• Elena
• Gabriel
• Graham
• Hayden
• Jack
• Jamie
• Jewelle
• Joy
• Kyla
• Marisa
• Megan

Class Memes

• dogs (rip)

Term 2, 2016

This class will forever be remembered for the campus-wide cult they had created. Those who have had their wrists marked with a familiar square of blue sharpie will forever be in awe of the iconic group that was the speculative fiction class. Members of the class included:

• Adrea
• Amanda
• Angela
• Annie
• Brooke/Lexi
• Cecelia
• Cooper (TA)
• Danielle
• Fisher
• Harper/Heather
• John/Jin
• Katie
• Maddie
• Professor Stevens
• Rocco
• Sam/Mas
• Vivian

Class Memes

• The Blue Tile and the TEAILEE
• Cthulhu
• Inner Dragon
• "Gasoline, make job quick!"
• "Taylor Swift is a snake"
• "They're taking the hobbits to Isengard!"
• The napping hill, and Cooper forgetting napping students

At Trinity

Term 2, 2016

This term consisted of:

• Sasha
• Grace
• Josh
• Audrey
• Sam
• Michael
• Sydney
• Ashley
• Madolyn
• Emily
• Zoey
• Amelia
• Meredith
• Samidha
• Jedy

and probably someone else I forgot. Our teacher was Alex and our TA was Sarah.

Class Projects

The class worked on a number of different projects, including an exquisite corpse story, reading of the book Kindred by Octavia Butler, and an individual short story that was then workshopped by the class. (Although there was no vote and it was not a competition, it was generally accepted that Sydney had written the best short story. [Note: The story is still unfinished despite it being like five months since she started it. Sorry guys, I'll link when it's finished.]) The class also worked in pairs to draw each other a dragon that represented them.

Class Memes

This class was filled with memes. So many that their class shirt was purple in honor of one of the memes, and also featured a word cloud of the different jokes. Memes include:

• "Salsa, got any fives?"
• "I'm even more blind than I was before."
• "So I hire a hitchhiker, and this guy who looks just like Josh Dun."
• The 25 pilots conspiracy theory.
• Bee, Apples, Cheesecake
• Anthony's eyes
• "You have to earn your coincidences."

Also, every person in class was given a nickname that perfectly suited them, like Jedy's nickname of Stephen Queen, due to her unnecessarily bloody stories (they were still good, by the way).

Term 2 2017

The class consisted of 19 people(sorry I can't name everyone not even gonna try) and our Instructor was Alex and our TA was Saher(they're the best btw). We had an amazing time and yeah I don't even remember everything we did. We barely finished all the workshopping that needed doing, since half the class went way over the 10-page guideline(cough cough 50 pages cough cough). Our Tshirt had a collection of our class jokes as of the day the shirt was designed.

Class song: Karate Alot Class jokes include...]

• Emilio(and murdering your characters in general)
• The ending of Time Bandits
• Buscemi eyes
• Spiderish Manbino
• Godzilla(who looks like a reject from sesame street)
• Karate Alot
• Camels
• spoopy

Works of fiction read include...

• The boy who couldn't sleep and never had to
• Those who walk away from Omelas
• The egg
• 20 simple steps to ventriloquism
• Cupid's compass
• A ghost among the mangroves

Movies watched include...

• Gentleman Broncos
• The body snatchers
• Time Bandits
• Godzilla
• Some random collection of Japanese ghost stories
• 2001 space odyssey

Class Members include

• Aideen
• Ainsley
• Anna
• Dave(David Bonnen)
• David
• Dianna
• Jade
• Jelena
• Katie
• Lily
• Max
• Maya
• Roman
• Rosalie
• Sam
• Shelby
• Sonya
• Sophie
• Thomas

Term One, 2018

Class members include:

• My Leige (Molly)
• Lord Izzy
• Lord Avery
• Brian
• Zach
• Michael
• Ayomi (Esther)
• DaniYELL (Danielle)
• Sir Alex
• Ella
• Susan (the tree)
• Carl (Went missing.)
• Frank (Never showed up.)

INTRODUCING OUR NEW SPEC FIC TEACHER:

• Ms. Jackie! A super fun, super awesome teacher with history in DukeTIP and a past in many things, such as dancing and trapeze. SHE TAKES US ON FIELD TRIPS!

ALONG WITH OUR TA:
*Sebrina! (The Young Adult Witch.) She loves cats.

OUR GUILDS:

• Sajama
• Aoraki
• Annapurna
• KILaminjaro

Things we have read include:

• The Graveyard Book
• Fantasy and Sci-fi Anthology
• Now Write!
• This Strange Way of Dying
• One individual book to study dialogue and speech patterns.

Things we have watched include:

• Guardians of the Galaxy
• The Twilight Zone: The Eye of the Beholder
• The Hunger Games
• Firefly: Ep 1, Pilot
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Places we have gone include:

• King William Historical District
• The Witte Museum

Our inside jokes include:

• Carl is missing.
• "I kind of wanted a good, even number today."
• Harrison the Goldfish (and by extension, George the Frog.)
• NO CULTS
• Green Tea x Chamomile tea
• Narbearto the Narwhale
• Susan is a tree
• Danielle is British/Irish
• Michael is Michael
• The kiwi walk
• Ms. Jackie's narwhale flop
• Hitting ourselves in the face with box-like objects (often books)
• etc.

Danielle and Alex scaring the crap out of everyone, counting Sebrina and Ms. Jackie, was a thing. Also, Universal Innovation always took our lunch seats.
ALSO WE FOUND OUT FRANK WAS COMING TERM TWO TOWARD THE LAST DAY OF CAMP, SO FRANK, IF YOU SEE THIS, HI, WE WERE SAD WE DIDN'T GET TO MEET YOU-

Term 2, 2018 (Lol I can't believe we have an entire section)(Well we deserve it- I mean, we are the best ;P)

Guildmasters:

• Ms. Jackie (Teacher)
• Ms. Sebrina (TA)
• Natasha (Mascot and brave leader)
• Narbearto the 2nd (Nice couch and trusty steed)
• Natasha X (Disfigured clone of Natasha, brought in on like the last day, eternally screaming into the void at her horrible existence.)

Class members:

• Adele
• Lucas
• Rebecca (Smol Bean)
• Flying Goat (Kennedy)
• Caspian (May) [Cassandrina Caspiani Blackanos Titania (I think)(yes that is correct)] [Michal Marie (Mitchell has two “l”s, Michael has an “e” and if you say “Mi-CAW she is not a bird)]
• Travis (Pokémon Master)
• Sophie
• Supernova (Sohi)
• Evelyn
• Alex
• Christopher (Gopher)
• Nya
• Brother Walker
• Sir Malachi (ALL HAIL ANNAPURNA)
• And the one you've all been waiting for... FRANK THE RESURRECTED! (Danielle from term 1 (Dft1): OMG MY BABY DID YOU GET MY LETTER?!)

Guilds (Basically cults, just accept it):

• Aoraki (Adele, Lucas, Rebecca, Flying Goat)
• Janga (Caspian, Travis, Sophie)
• Sajama (Supernova, Evelyn, Alex, Christopher) [We adopted Sophie on the last day][I'd also like to point out that we won the guild contest]
• Annapurna (Nya, Walker, Malachi, Frank)
• KILimanjaro (Ms. Jackie, Ms. Sebrina)

Class ships (Most popular to least popular- debatable)#SophieNova4life:

• Flying Gopher (Kennedy/Christopher) (Were serenaded by Rebecca and others on multiple occasions)(Temporarily successful- ended because of undisclosed complications)(Still best friends though... arguably even closer now than we were before)
• Fraspian (Frank/Caspian) It was not a thing! (Yes it was stop denying it)
• Lubecca/ Lubeccas (Lucas/Rebecca) (They both insist it's not a thing but we all know it is)
• Sophienova (Supernova/Sophie) (Nobody really talked about it much which is why it's not #1 [Notice** It's most to least "popular", not most "successful"] but it was definitely a thing and it was the cutest thing EVER.)(Temporarily successful but sadly no longer a thing 😢)[sorry, but you know what they say about relationtips: we're here for fun, not for long :/]
• Lucas/Nya (Started surfacing at the last dance but never became an official ship- guess we'll never know)

Inside Jokes/ Weird stuff (I feel ashamed that I don't know more pls add on):

• Where is Carl? Carl is dead. (Dft1: THAT WAS OUR JOKE BRIAN KILLED HIM) (WE DON'T CARE WE ADOPTED IT)
• DOCTOR FRANK I DON'T FEEL SO GOOD (Dft1: omg my baby’s a doctor, I’m so proud~) (The cure for everything is to slap some masking tape on it)
• I concur (Love ya Supernova)(though right now I want to yell at you for what you did)[I'm sorry, but it had to be done]
• Travis angering the ants.
• Randall Randy Rochester (Lunchtime brain-child of Nya)
• The salt sandwich (sent by the web apps demons, eaten by Travis.) (Dft1: Did you mean: Ayomi)
• Frank creeping everybody out with the smiling man, etc
• Enter stool (I still believe the best strategy is to chain the beast to said stool using the handcuffs and then forcefeed him the poisonous plants that you technically can’t pick up)
• Go some rain
• Travis and his poke-squad, consisting of Lucas, Walker, and sometimes Frank and Alex.
• Malachi and his Annapurna/Sea Turtle-infested stories
• Sentient Cockroaches
• The Magical Lime/Rebeccabannana
• Eggs
• It's an avocado! (Dft1: Thaaanks...)
• The narwhal goes STAB
• Travis's story made Flying Goat tear out walker's heart and shove it down his throat, then rip open his chest, I quote, "like the bread at communion", before having Walker, with his dying breath, rip Flying Goat's throat out and eat it. Travis is an odd child.
• No grapes (If you sat anywhere near Travis at lunch you know what I'm talking about)
• The confiscation of the salt (Mainly due to Travis putting absurd amounts of salt on his perfectly good fries.) [They're called GOD FRIES THANK YOU] (Dft1: WAIT GIVE AYOMI BACK)
• Hallucinatory beans
• “Carl is sixteeeeeeeen” was whispered by May/Caspian EVERY SINGLE COUNTOFF
• Travis' repeated attempts to create "The God Fries" (Does anybody remember the recipe for god fries? Just curious- FG) (Travis here, it was Fries, buffalo sauce, salt, and vinegar, plus red pepper flakes on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.) (lol thanks for the specificity Travis)
• Ms. Sebrina's Arthurian legends.
• Ms. Sebrina finally losing her shnoot and sending the Creative Writing instructor to yell at us at the last lunch. I still don't know what we did...
• Veganism is your only path to Jesus. Also, MEAT IS MURDER. that was purdy funny
• The Bloody Mary in pod people consistently getting out first. (Except Rebecca)
• Heeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyy
• LEavE RoOM fOr jEsUS
• Yelling at the milk truck because it wasn't vegan enough...
• WEB APPS CAN DIEEEEEEEE
• The. Pickup. Lime.
• It'S a MyTh. NOO It'S a LeGeNd.
• Also the time we attempted a break-in [Chris you better know what I'm talking about]

^Oh my GOD yes that serenade went down the drain- I was full-on tomato mode. (Red face, curled up in a ball of embarrassment on the floor, the whole nine yards) Rebecca and Sohi had to be peeled from his door lol [it was gr8] ^please don't remind me ^Hey u gotta admit it kinda worked out tho ^Three points 1. Not untrue 2. Still very embarrassing 3. I was honestly listening to the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack that whole time and the unmentioned fourth point: I was holding the door closed with ONE FOOT. ^lol embarrassing for you? I got a speech given to me by RC Gordon about how I was being too desperate and should leave u alone (even though I was just sitting against the wall by your door telling Sohi and Smol Bean to stop whilst internally screaming) ^not to mention the later but never the less extremely awkward conversation with the RC Wisdom during TiP prom. ^lol true that tops everything on the embarrassment scale ^yeah (didn’t that conversation happen twice?) ^yep once when he asked us why we weren't dancing and again when we were sitting too close ^thats what I thought

• MEDIEVAL SNAILS (Sebastian the stabby snail)(Omg okay so I put all of my Duke TIP pins on my school ID and yesterday I realized that I lost Sebastian and I'm crying right now WHY ME) (similar train of thought : I ended up with two game time buttons so is anybody missing theirs)
• HELLO DADDY HELLO MOM I'M YOUR CH CH CH CH CH CH CH CH CHERRY BOMB (HELLO WORLD I'M YOUR WILD GIRL I'M YOUR CH CH CH CH CH CH CH CH CHERRY BOMB)
• Iiiiiii-i-i-i-i'm (Aggressively headbangs twice) HOOKED ON A FEELING
• Travis's poke-pants, poke-pj's, poke-themed safe room, etc
• BUT WE JUST MET RICK RIORDAN'S MOM
• if you like pina coLADAS (AND GETTIN CAUGHT IN THE RAIN)
• still an odd number of odd children
• RAAMEEEN
• killing the ants EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
• IT’S JUST THE WIIIINNNNDDDD!!!!!!!
• apple juice
• Lancelot being a nontippropriate boy.
• Rebabka having to stand outside of the classroom and eat a banana while looking extremely sad as per order of Guildmaster
• Caspian's refusal to accept Natasha as a narwhale.(Natasha can be anything, she is not held back by the old-world species constraints!) Natasha went so far as to reconfigure her body, yet Caspian still did not accept her. Poor Natasha.
• The fact that walker and Lucas both separately came up with yeti stories for their final project.
• The fact that we got snubbed EVERY.SINGLE.DANCE NIGHT. they just couldn't play "Hooked on a Feeling" But, we did get a recognition on TIPsync, so it eases the wound a little (also at TIP prom, which was great for multiple reasons)
• The Pie-Ing of Ms. Jackie. 90% sure she didn't think she would be pied, then she was pied. Twice. >:)
• Travis' book jail (Travis you bad boy)
• WELLS...
• The donut hole eating contest (tbc next year) (this is ON) (ending score was I believe 43 each) (I concur) (my stomach hurts just thinking about it)(score is still 43-43 as Mabee had no donut holes. how disappointing)(I guess we'll just have to find a donut place and settle this when I finally visit you)
• Stair-climbing races
• red beans (Christopher still has quite the collection three years later)
• Malachi’s apparent lack of ability to dodge a frisbee
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail and all of those internal jokes
• No Google forms
• leg
• the land mines
• the Walker death timer
• The one-eyed duck
  • • • • • • • • • • SPIRITUAL OPIUM FOR THE WIN [tip 2k19 let's gooo]
• We are not trash
• bugs with glistening mandibles (I’m not expecting most of you to understand this one)(lol now that I remember it again, I am totally writing that)
• “You dare, elf scum!” (Once again an inside inside joke.)
• If memory serves, one of the critical reviews for the anthology was "It [This book] left me screaming into the void" -Santa Claus, which is a BIG MOOD (internal Mo's rc group joke only Sophie will truly understand)
• Overly dramatic pod people deaths
• The Cupid in pod people being......ugh

Family Tree:

• Ms. Sebrina had no children, but since she is Ms. Jackie's sister she has nieces and great-nieces and great-nephews.
• Ms. Jackie's children- Nya, Supernova, and Adele.
• Nya's children- Lucas, Rebecca, Flying Goat, Caspian, Travis, Sophie, Evelyn, Alex, Christopher, Walker, Malachi, and Frank ( Caspian is also Nya’s mother due to an interstellar mystery disease-time travel mishap during which everyone caught a weird waterborne disease and Dr. Frank cured everyone* with masking tape.) (*actually most everyone died)
• Supernova's children- Flying goat(once disowned for stealing Supernova's FEDORA but let back into the family), Rebecca, and Lucas. Everyone else was disowned. - CORRECTION: Sophie disowned Supernova. TWICE.
• Adele didn't have any children.

So... The familiar spirits had Ms. Jackie and Ms. Sebrina, and Ms. Sebrina had no children. Her cats were enough. Ms. Jackie had Supernova, Nya, and Adele. Adele didn't have any children, but Nya and supernova did. They agreed to share whichever children they wanted, making for a complicated family tree. Nya and Supernova shared all of the Speculative Fiction children, but unfortunately, Supernova disowned everyone but Rebecca, Lucas, and Flying Goat. (She disowned Flying Goat for stealing her hat but later reclaimed her because she couldn't bear the thought of life without her.) SOPHIE DISOWNED SUPERNOVA TWICE. Nya, however, is a kind soul and never disowned one of her twelve children. The family tree is yet to be continued, but legend (or maybe myth) has it that Flying Goat and Chris grew up to have a narwhal farm. (If I may ask, where did this legend (or myth) come from?) (FG here- my exquisite corpse tells that story (and I'm pretty sure it was legend- no god-like entities involved)

Ages! (I forgot sorry):

I don't know everyone's age (fake, of course, we were all more or less 13-14 in reality) so I'm just going to list everyone in the class and hope they get filled in right.

• Adele
• Lucas (11)
• Rebecca
• Flying Goat (16, the awkward age where you don't know what to do with your life and you're trying desperately to figure out what the heck everything means) [BIG MOOD]
• Caspian (13)
• Travis (15)
• Sophie (13)
• Supernova
• Evelyn (3)
• Alex (27)
• Christopher (14)
• Nya
• Walker
• Malachi
• Frank

Literary Works

I, for one, have written a lot of things since TIP and I thought it would be cool if we could all share our stories, poems, etc. with each other for fun... click here Speculative Fiction Stories to read other's work and/ or add your own. (Hopefully it will get really big)

(Hey guys! It's Brooke&Garrick from Duke East. We're really curious about everything that went down in this class, can you contact us via Instagram (use Brooke's insta @brookekhuffman)? We're both basically TiP historians, and we'd love to understand some of the stuff going down here. I (Brooke) used to be a spec fic kid back in my first year, and would love to hear about y'all experience. Hope y'all see this!)