Daniel's homework is, on the best of days, mildly coherent. That is to say, he always finds good arguments, always has references to his different theories or interpretation, but has a few problems organizing them past the bullet-point stage of an essay.
Lawrence is quite proud when the young man hands in a very coherent essay after two weeks of biweekly detentions spent together with him, a sharp, thoughtful and quite intuitive analysis of the social commentary in L'Assommoir, their last studied book.
(That work was not an easy assignment by any means, nor was the reading, and Lawrence made sure to praise Daniel for getting both done despite his chaotic academic performances.)
He keeps the paper for last as he grades the class, content with the attention everyone seems to have given to this one piece of homework despite its difficulty.
As he flips through the papers, he notices the doodles in the margin, because he asked the students to hand in their drafts, no matter the state as long as they were clean. He easily recognizes Howard's draft despite the missing name, little football players running along the top of the page after a flying ball. Paulina's is easy to spot, because it is the only one with no doodles whatsoever, and full paragraphs cleanly written in her usual vivid ink. Star's doodles are always the same, a small whale-shark in the top corner and its progress all around her draft dividing each part of her thinking process clearly. Kwan liked to draw cats lazing around titles and corners, all fluid curves as his cursive was. Tucker's taken the habit of writing in equations and math formulas as stand-ins for the usual abbreviations, and for this one draft, he took the time to write a small lexicon on the side, for 'Mr Lancer sir !' to fully understand his work. Samantha's ghosts could move on the paper that Lawrence wouldn't be surprised. She always had an uncanny ability to make even the silliest of doodles seem alive, and the inspiration brought by the undead roaming their town only added to her 'gift'. Wes is the same, though his ghosts are always creatures of horror, Eldritch-levels of abomination, opposite to the very human-like tendencies of Samantha's. Mickey has taken to flowers lately, and Lawrence hopes their art teacher has listened and included them in his next assignment for that class.
Overall, all drafts are clean, coherent and very doodled on. As an high-schooler draft should always be.
(He knows old colleagues in other towns that would have choked up on their own tongue at seeing any letter out of the lines on a draft.
Such dramatics for nothing, really. They didn't even have ghosts in between classes and always complained about how immature their students were. Lucky folks.)
Once Lawrence has graded all the papers, passing grades for every student and extra-credit for their drafts (with one more point for Tucker and his lexicon), Lawrence finally allows himself to pick up Daniel's work. Six full pages, rounded letters slightly tilted from a quick redaction, name scribbled above the title, a thank-you note for Mr Lancer pinned at the top.
The draft, previously stuck in the middle of the pile, falls on his desk first.
Drafts, actually.
The first one has the usual doodles in the middle of the bullet-point list : space-themed, small will-o'the-wisps along the page, a little caricature of Jasmine at the bottom with her graduate cap and robe and a rough drawing of the book Daniel was dissecting on the draft.
As all things were with Daniel, his draft-doodles were chaotic in theme and spacing, but neat in execution.
The other sheet, however, has nothing to do with L'Assommoir or even Literature as a course. It has, instead, everything to do with their local superhero and dead teenager Danny Phantom.
On the page are dozens of small sketches of a very well-known costume, the black-and-white design resolutely penciled all over the page. Twelve models, and each sporting some variation of the simple jumpsuit (the same jumpsuit the Fentons wore...), with added accessories, armor, different gloves or boots, a facemask, even some swords drawn along the belt of the third design. Daggers, guns (and still so reminiscent of the Fentons' designs, some he knew were from Jasmine's own hand...), and the eternal thermos Phantom always brought everywhere with him...
It's Phantom's jumpsuit. There's no way around it, no doubt, even with the variations added.
Daniel (because the little comments around the different sketches are his student's writing, sure as he is his teacher, mixed in with Jasmine's neat and small cursive) has, probably by mistake, handed Lawrence a draft full of details over how Danny Phantom himself worked.
Down to the fact that the suit was not worn, but was merely materialized, built from ambient ectoplasm and linked to Phantom's core. It could sound nonsensical, but Lawrence was an Amity inhabitant.
(Everyone here knew what ectoplasm was.)
Daniel was, for all intent and purpose, much more familiar with their teenage undead superhero than anyone had yet suspected (as was Jasmine, but she wasn't his student like Daniel still was).
To the point of redesigning the ghost's costume.
Lawrence looks down at the last sketch, the dual belts, the green highlights along the legs, the now fingerless gloves and the high collar covering the mannequin's mouth, the white parts replaced by mat grey, the boots now crawling up mid-calf…
Then he flips back to Howard's work. The quarterback always illustrates his works in literature, to reference his examples, and has used, as always, Phantom in this essay, as proof that social determinism was not real, because "Every scientist believing in ghosts may say they are emotionless, cruel monsters, and we were all once scared of Phantom, but that didn't keep him from becoming a hero".
The picture he'd chosen was pretty recent, taken by Star for the school journal.
The costume depicted there, as Phantom flew above the football field, the Hunter ghost after him, was the perfect copy of the sketch. But that had happened only yesterday, and the article Star had written was about this change of costume, when the day before, Phantom had been his usual self, simple hazmat (Fenton) suit and all. Lawrence himself has seen him, because he had been that Lunch Lady ghost again, right through the professors' office.
This redesign was less than two days old.
Daniel had handed in his work a week ago.
(I'm…. Alive ?)
(And very very sorry)
(And not garanteeing the following chapters cause... took me a year to be inspired for this ?)
(sorry)
Posted 24.08.20