"Why am I even doing this."

"Huh?" The writer glanced behind him, to see me, Ben, glowering.

"It's another dumb r/WritingPrompts prompt."

"Huh?"

I glowered at him, and back at my screen. The teacher on my Zoom screen talked about the end of the semester, but she didn't notice I was on Reddit. And Honestly? She probably didn't care.

"Well, at least it isn't superheroes or aliens, I guess." I muttered. "Might be able to get some good comedy out of this."

"No, no, man, I don't know who you are." the writer stood back, confused. "In fact, where am I?"

"You're in a study room in the High Library at Elizabethtown College. It's 1:29, and you've just been made up by a bored college freshman in the middle of his english 100 class." I rolled my eyes. "You're a person I made up for a writing prompt because I was bored of talking about things I already know about."

"Like what?"

"Going over logos, pathos, and ethos for the fifth time this semester." I grumbled. "I really just wanted to write something, to be honest. Didn't want to hear about TED talk analysis and research that we went over a month ago."

"No, like, how did you get in my room?" the writer looked around, confused. A tic-tac-toe game was on the whiteboard. I had done it myself, out of sheer boredom.

"This isn't your room, idiot." I repeated. "You're in a study room. I created you 5 minutes ago when I saw this prompt by u/ReadyDude3849 that looked interesting enough to pass 30 minutes before I head off to my ED101 class." I explained. Of course, I wasn't actually explaining. I was just writing out words as if I was

"Wait, so I'm not real?" the writer titled his nonexistent head.

"Nope." I smiled.

"So, what is this all about?" he asked me, technically.

"It's a meta prompt about me struggling not to write about superheroes or aliens, mostly." I said. "The prompt references how the subreddit seems to go through the same aesthetic over and over again, unable to pry itself away from the superheroes and aliens that so many people want to subvert." I wrote down. "Still, I have some issues with the meta prompt, so I wanted to make my own short story."

"Wait, so this is a meta prompt? Aren't those like, the next most common thing behind superheroes and aliens?" the writer looked scrolled through the subreddit.

"I mean, that's true-" I started. "I just don't think the OP realizes how diverse the actual prompts on the site are." I sighed. "Sure, the posts are usually about superheroes or aliens, but the stories themselves are diverse." I finished.

"Huh? What do you mean by diverse?" the writer challenged me.

"Well, good thing you asked that random question. Let me explain." I smiled, and left the class Zoom, as my teacher finished up with the lecture.

"The aesthetics of the prompts aren't always too creative. The ideas we make are normally recycled, but coming from a writer, I think that can sometimes be a good thing." I said, smiling. "The prompts themselves, at least, the aesthetic of the month that we like so much, doesn't really matter. Just looking at all the ideas by themselves lets me come up with whole new worlds, new characters, and even other prompts for other people to explore."

"Like me?" The writer used his nonexistent hand to point at himself.

"Exactly!" I chuckled to myself, as I kept writing. These meta jokes are fun. "Heck, I've even seen prompts exactly like this one at least 3 or 4 times this month, and honestly, I didn't want to write at that time. But now, looking at the prompt, an idea came over me, and because I was bored and had time, I could post it here for everyone to see. If anything is important, I think it's that, at the end of the day, people will read what I write, and have fun. The prompt doesn't matter as much as the story that comes out of it. And seeing stories by great people like u/shalidar13 and u/ApocalypseOwl makes me smile. The stories themselves are creative, and that's what matters. " I switched locations to an actual classroom, where class was soon going to start.

"Wait, where are we now" the writer asked.

"Doesn't matter." I said. "The point is, the creative process often recycles the same ideas, but its how we expand on those ideas that makes it all the better. The stories we produce and enjoy here are all unique. I just like seeing cool people write cool stuff, and that's why I'm here."

"Ok, I get it, your cheesy lecture hit. Still, where are we now? This room is way more bright than before." the writer looked around at all the posters that, honestly, were for young kids. We were in a basic spanish classroom.

"You don't exist anymore." I said.

As I finished writing the prompt, a couple of my friends came to sit down at my table to chat before class started.

I did a quick runthrough of my prompt response, and with a good feeling in my chest, hit "Comment."