(no subject)

[zana16]

I've been reading over "the early works". Wes was the only truly interesting character I created before the age of 14. Jana and Travis were all fluff and angst, and psychoanalyzing Jana makes me think it's no wonder I was stupid enough to get engaged at 17. But Wes intrigues me. I don't think I could write his story, though. He's too... not me... for me to write him. And I honestly don't think I could handle killing off another character anytime soon [Wes's sister dies, for those who haven't read this, which would be the entire human population except myself, and most of it's so bad that it's going to stay the entire human population because I'm ashamed that I wrote this drivel but it's also part of myself so I can't delete it]; I'm still feeling unfulfilled and just miserable after Claire's death, and Stephen will never forgive me for killing her off [Stephen is a character in my latest story, which is not nearly so awful but is in dire need of a rewrite, and he's half in love with Claire, but also half stoned so it never goes anywhere]. Travis is almost a Mary Sue (oh, god forbid) for Jana (who is not the obvious self-insert she seems to be, but is still too similar to myself for comfort), but of course then he goes off and does all these angst things like experimenting with drugs and being unable to remember that he raped someone, and then killing the bad guy who wears a motorcycle jacket because I thought you just couldn't mock a good cliché better than by using it, but it just comes off as lame. Thank God my writing has improved. Actually, some of my short stories of the period were pretty good in the wonderful-evocations-of-horrible-events-that-make-the-reader-want-to-puke rape scenes, etc. And yet, it took me six years after that to dig up the actual memories. Weird. Anyways, Wes. Wes is of course the Strong Silent Type and also a bit of a hobo. He and Travis had a much healthier relationship going on than Travis and Jana could ever achieve, but Travis was always stupidly in love with Jana so even though the sex with Wes was good, Trav took the first--well, okay, the sixth--chance he could with Jana and they ended up with white picket fences. Travis should have ended up with Wes, but this is where the self-insert comes in. Goddammit, I create the perfect adolescent vision of the conflicted romantic, and he's damn well gonna end up with the girl because that's the way I want life to be. And then I write AUs to my own stories, and that's just amusing. I had the AU in which Jana never broke up with Rob so Travis was just fucked over like that. And the AU in which Leslie is the Whore With A Heart Of Gold, and she Understands Travis's Pain. It upsets me that I don't like my main characters after I've written them, because they're shallow or immature or whatever. Cause they're the characters I put the most of myself into, so they reflect who I am. Perhaps I don't like myself? Actually, that hasn't been the problem for awhile. Although sometimes I get really sick of living in my own head and want to scream at myself about my limitations. I also want to scream at myself about this whole sexuality thing. I want to be able to put a label on myself and come to terms with it. I don't normally like labels, but this one would be useful for figuring out who the hell I am. And I really want Toni and Carlos to hook up, cause they would just be the sweetest couple, but the people I wrote them as are very clearly not gay, and are in fact not at all comfortable even with the idea, besides which they both have sex with girl characters on a rather regular basis. And dude, this is a really long ramble most of which you really didn't particularly want to know, so I'll stop and go take a shower so my hair won't be icky.