Wrote an Onion-style satire for my comp class, AI detector called it “predictable and formulaic” like my ex

I wrote a satire piece for my freshman comp class about a town rallying to ban left turns because the mayor once spun out in a traffic circle. It was full Onion energy: dramatic headline, faux quotes, escalating nonsense and civic outrage over absolutely nothing. I was proud of it. It had jokes. It had a guy named Carl who insisted roundabouts are “satanic centrifuges.” It even had a city council proposing a law that would make your navigation app scream if you tried to turn left.

Then I uploaded it to the LMS and the AI detector flagged it as AI-generated for being “predictable and formulaic.” It highlighted my Onion-style bits like “area man” and “studies show” as suspicious patterns. The robot basically scolded me for using satire conventions, which is exactly what the assignment asked for.

My professor is chill, but they also treat the detector like a safety device required by academic gravity. The policy says “scores are indicators, not conclusions,” but at this point I feel like I am the conclusion wearing a pointed hat.

I have drafts, notes, timestamps and an entire Google Doc of rejected headlines such as “Area Man Accidentally Becomes Mayor After Confusing Ballot With Diner Menu” and “Nation Grateful To Have New Time-Wasting Discourse To Replace Old Time-Wasting Discourse.” Still, I am worried they will see the detector score, see my clean punchlines and assume the algorithm is some kind of truth oracle.

So here is the actual issue. How do I walk into this meeting and explain that satire uses formulas because satire is a craft? Should I bring my messy brainstorm like it is evidence in a trial? How do I frame the conversation so I sound like a student explaining a writing process, not someone screaming “creativity has patterns” at a person holding a gradebook?