"I'm not sure I should be saying this, but we teachers...well, we each have our own ideal of what our students should be, right? Their friends are the same way. And parents, well, they have things they want for their children, too. Every one of us has this agenda, this notion of what a given person should be like, and we just push it on them whether it fits or not. Now, it's unlikely that all of us have the same ideal in mind for any particular student. Why, if teachers and parents had their way, the student would be miserable. Take Nakajima. She was a 'good girl' to everybody, right?"

The other man nodded.

"Well, if you ask me, she was just showing each of us the face we wanted to see. What I think is that if Nakajima was getting along with everybody so well, she wasn't specializing in anyone, you understand? She wasn't cultivating any real connections with anybody."

"Even with you?"

Her teacher's face took on a bitter expression. "To be brutally honest, I prefer the students that cause a little bit of trouble--you know, demand a little attention. I always thought Nakajima was a good girl, but when she graduated, heck, I would've forgotten her. We all would have. I probably wouldn't have remembered her if she came to her tenth reunion."

They would be dead by morning. When you've seen it happened enough times, you get use to the signs.

A defense without archers is like a feast without ale - utterly pointless.

“Bad or good isn’t the point.” Professor Piper shook her head, and her long, wild hair swayed from side to side. “This is plagiarism.”
“No,” Cath said. “I wrote it myself.”
“You wrote it yourself? You’re the author of Simon Snow and the Mage’s Heir?”
“Of course not.” Why was Professor Piper saying this?
“These characters, this whole world belongs to someone else.”
“But the story is mine.”
“The characters and the world make the story,” the older woman said, like she was pleading with Cath to understand.
“Not necessarily…” Cath could feel how red her face was. Her voice was breaking.
“Yes,” Professor Piper said. “Necessarily. If you’re asked to write something original, you can’t just steal someone else’s story and rearrange the characters.”
“It’s not stealing.”
“What would you call it?”
“Borrowing,” Cath said, hating that she was arguing with Professor Piper, not ever wanting to make Professor Piper’s face look this cold and closed, but not able to stop. “Repurposing. Remixing. Sampling.”
“Stealing.”
“It’s not illegal.” All the arguments came easily to Cath; they were the justification for all fanfiction. “I don’t own the characters, but I’m not trying to sell them, either.”
Professor Piper just kept shaking her head, more disappointed than she’d seemed even a few minutes ago. She ran her hands along her jeans. Her fingers were small , and she was wearing a large, narrow turquoise ring that jutted out over her knuckle. “Whether it’s legal is hardly relevant. I asked you to write an original story, you, and there’s nothing original here.”

“I don’t want to kiss a stranger,” Cath would answer. “I’m not interested in lips out of context.”