Remember also that I was 15 and it allowed me to deal with my crushes and hormones in an original way.
The plotline was sparked from real life. I was hanging out with a bunch of my male friends studying, and someone made a comment, something like 'what if the world ended and the only people that survived were the ones in this room? And what if they had to repopulate the planet?' We were all maths nerds so obviously a tree diagram had to be made, outlining the possible combinations to avoid incest etc... it was funny, and it set my writers mind buzzing.
So I wrote a story where the world ended that day, with just us. I wrote about us leaving the building and not being able to find anyone, I wrote about our breakdowns, depression, nightmares, I wrote about faith and purpose, why 'God' would do that to us - remembering that I was quite religious at 15 - I wrote about gender roles, about the differences between girls and boys, how polygamist relationships could work in that type of group, about fear and regret and bad sex, about fear of sex and about the isolation of people, even in a group, how really, we're all trapped inside our own heads, always alone. I wrote about the role of sex in intimacy.
I wrote that story and it's one of the stories I'm most proud of. I actually gave it a conclusion, which is weird for me, because normally I just write what's in my head and I never get more than halfway. This story jumped around, but it had defined parts and it did all mostly fit together.
It's an interesting experience to look it over, writing in first person from my own perspective, I put a lot of myself into the character and how she thought, was how I thought.
To be honest, when I think of this fic 'me and 5 guys in the end of the world' I think, holy shit I was a kinky 15 year old, but then I reread it and I remember, that's not how it was at all. In the entire story there were only 2 sex scenes, the first of which my character prepares for by secretly drinking, and is done in the dark, faking pleasure, crying, followed by an intense shower scene where she cries, can't get clean and knows she regrets it. When she talks about it with her partner the next day she says
-->
“Regret is stupid.” She muttered. “It serves no
purpose and its not like you can change anything. I’ll still have lost my
virginity today. It hurt and I don’t know if sex will ever feel good. I don’t want
to have to do it. It
scares me and that’s basically it okay? I’m. Scared. Of. Sex. And I just feel
dirty. I’m sorry, I’m not trying to make you feel- I
don’t know regret or whatever. This isn’t anything to do with you. It’s just me
and my fucked up mind.”
-->
“How's that for a healthy sex mindset?
Thankfully the second one was a bit more healthy, I think I channeled my idea for a 'perfect date', though I mixed it with the angst of sleeping with someone you don't love. So it involved walking on the beach, feeling pretty and good and close, before making love on a jacket on the sand while the sun set.
By this point, the character has more fully accepted her reality and is trying to make it work, pushing through her fears and depression. There's some important metaphors in this scene for being brave, for doing things when you're scared. In a deleted scene of the story, my character realised that this scene, though she'd done everything seemingly right, the clothes and makeup, the location, the romance, it never worked because she was always just doing it because of duty and without love, however perfect you try to make it, it won't be.
It got deleted though because in the end of this story, she never really finds her 'love' and it wasn't a lesson she ever learnt. *Cue tiny violins playing the saddest song*
Honestly, the main lesson that she was supposed to learn was that though her bond with the guys became incredibly codependant and she became incredibly fucked up, the way she grows and the relationships she makes with them, made the awful reality, if not worth it, than at least partially worthwhile.
In the story, time does revert and things do go back to the way they were before- only she and the other boys have changed. The last arc of the story is how they dealt with that, the boys with their girlfriends, with their parents, with their friends, with each other. How when they don't have to be dependent on each other and with them, do they still chose to be?
I tried to deal with it rationally and realistically. Most of the guys go back to their girlfriends and while they remain part of her support systems, the character is well and truly fucked up by this point. Self harm, depression, lots of risky sex with strangers of both genders, trust issues, questionable closeness to one of the boys in a relationship etc.
"When it all started with the boys, I never
thought I’d miss it, but…here we are I guess. I mean, at least they called me
by my name when we did it. At least their breath weren’t foul with the stench
of alcohol, at least they weren’t the type of guy that would leer disgustingly
after me, slap my ass when I walked past them in a club. But when all you’re
looking for is a one-night stand, the selection isn’t the nice, upstanding
citizen sort of boys; it’s the sleazy, rough man-whore types, which I truly do
hate. Still, they know how to please a girl, the ones that aren’t just out for
a quick rough fuck. The experienced ones that aren’t as evil give me quite a
good ride really. And I know I shouldn’t complain, even to myself. It’s my
decision to seek this sort of thing out. I could stay at home.
Sometimes I find girls too. I don’t think
it’s that I’m attracted to that sort of thing. I mean, it’s nice but that isn’t
why I do it. Sometimes, I want to forget everything to do with boys. I want to
forget that I was ever stranded with just boys. I want to forget what being
with a man feels like and be with a girl. It’s still just sex…I can just forget
a little better.
Megan would kill me for being such a whore.
The old me would kill me for it. I don’t ever call Mia words like that anymore.
Slut, whore, ho. I mean, I never meant them, but I’d be a total hypocrite anyway.
She giggles about other boys, but she truly does love Ben. She’s just a flirt.
I might not have a boyfriend, but I sell myself. For company, for some fake
closeness, for a few cheap drinks. That’s so much worse.
What happened screwed me up. More than
anyone can ever know. The others…maybe they’re changed too and I just can’t
tell. But for me, it’s like the changes are shifts so deep in me, so huge and
significant but buried so deep that no one but me can ever see it."
I don't know, I like this fic. I wrote so many depressing stories, so much Harry Potter self harm/abuse fanfic, back in the day (aka Year 8), but this fic I think was the closest to sophistication.
Too bad it's real people based. No one I'm really friends with now though still a few I see with some regularity. I wrote it based on crushes I had when I was 15 so it was never relevant to you-know-who or my boyfriend or anything.
It's actually one of the things that made me realise I was making a mistake when I was with my boyfriend though. For awhile, whenever I had a crush, I could always write them into this story. Because there were lots of guys, there was always a few spots that were variable, I could just slot them in but my boyfriend, I never had the urge to write anything, it just didn't inspire me at all. Whereas you-know-who, apart from over 100000 words of blog entries, there's at least another 100000 words of different stories, started even as recent as last week (school shooting plotline). I just like writing any type of angst/horror storyline. War, zombies, kidnapping, rape, pregnancy, school shooting, post-apocalyptic, car crash, those are my fiction kinks so I have stories written on all those things. I love writing about relationships and emotions and fear and love and intimacy in horrible conditions.
Sadly, I'm not that creative with overall ideas, I take them generally from things I read or hear or on the news. Like, a story I wrote about two people being kidnapped and locked in a room, forced into performing sex acts for a camera in return for food/water/sleep/not being dead, eventually leading to Stockholm Syndrome and erotic codependency, was based on a Glee fanfic from the Glee Kink Meme, here is the link if you want to read it (if Finn/Kurt doesn't totally squick you).
The school shooting story I started after Glee did a shooting episode last week. Or when I read a particularly good book with a storyline that stirs my interest. I make the events in the story original but I tend to steal overall ideas. Maybe one day I'll be creative enough to come up with my own story. Actually, this story I talked about in this entry is the closest thing I can think of to original. I called it I Am Legend but it's not really that similar.
Anyway, goodnight :)
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