*In Theory

I'm learning theory in Theory, theoretically.
We've been talking about how "post" everything tends to be now (post-human; post-feminist; post-modern), which is to say that entertainment is so overdone that we have to start sticking new prefixes to old ideas.
It's not so bad, really. Post-humanism, for example, is the exploration of humans beyond the realm of their own humanity, kinda. I managed to tie this to videogames (the wife's suggestion) for a paper, and that made it pretty fun. I'll share the paper, which you can check out here.
Anyway, my educator wants us to write Hypertext (capital H) for his class. From here on, I will refer to my professor as Joel because that's his name. (No surnames or street addresses, though. Do your investigatin' somewhere else, stalkers!).
As it turns out, you and I have been creating hypertext for years now, though I'm taking most of the credit. Hypertext is any work that champions choice for the reader, while also promoting intertextuallity and digital information. Like, if I want to provide you guys with a picture of a gopher at work, and I link that and give you something to click on, that's hypertext. I'm creating while you're manipulating. See? The gopher is a tad generous as an example, maybe, but you get the idea.
Now, we're not going to try and bamboozle Joel or my classmates by passing off our old discussions as though they were my new work, but you readers know how much good stuff is in here. It's all white goo, as we know. There's no Oreo cookie exteriors at Tragic Hero; just the filler. So, I think a fair compromise will be this: If I use old material, I'll say so up front, and add new content to old posts so that even previously published stuff is being updated for the sake of this assignment. Any class-specific material will be noted with a little star (*) so that my peers don't end up reading classic  posts about me trying to get laid from 2008.
In class, we eventually got into 'trauma theory', which explains how the guy who wrote Schindler's List can never work back to the Holocaust (capital H), no matter how hard he tries.
I know, I know: Schindler wrote Schindler's List. 
Don't worry, I'll elaborate on these theories as we go along.
Basically, trauma theory examines a work through the trauma it centers on, and then the de-centering of the subject due to the complications of experiencing trauma. I gravitated to this theory right away because if there's one thing I know, it's trauma.
Especially these days. I'd say that it is cheap to use the death of a friend to influence school work. I mean, people have to say something is good if it's about a dead friend. Our society dictates this sort of thing. You're not gonna write a story and say, "This is really about my friend who died and I miss her dearly," only to have the reader say, "It needs more thrills. Something with a boat, maybe?" No, they'll say things like, "Oh, isn't that sweet? Isn't that just a considerate thing? What a way to honour someone close."
So, let me begin by saying that I ain't that sweet. This needs to be done and I need to latch onto something that I understand in order to write it well. Sarah's death can't be understood, but I know it'll work for the sake of handing something in. There's nothing sweet about that rationale, really.
However, I will mention that she'd be fine with the idea. When I told her my plan, my wife said, "Sarah would be glad that you could use her to get some school work done," and she's right. Sarah's reaction would be, "Yeah, whatever. I'd do that if you were dead," and then she'd instruct me to depict her as a pirate or something equally inappropriate.

There we are. This feels right. This is going well already.
The funny thing is that I said 'pirate' before realizing I already had the picture.

So, let's get out our red pens and start giving me some marks! Let's see how the utmost (small-scale) trauma affects the writer and reader, and how they create material together.

Through this process, I keep picturing my biggest, die-hard fan, who has been waiting for an update to the blog for almost a year now. Then he sees this post and goes, "Finally! A new one!" But by the time he gets to the bottom of this he's disgusted, and says something like, "What the fuck?! School work!?"