i’ve been working through/realizing some things and wanted to shout about them into a void, and there’s no better void to shout into than tumblr, so here i am
so i’ve been working on (using that term loosely here bc this is pure, self-indulgent fun that i will never show to anyone) this story—a spin-off of a fanfic some friends and i wrote in HIGH SCHOOL—for uhhhhhh like fifteen years, and every few years or so i change things around: character names or personalities, relationships, plot points, etc.
it’s always set in the modern day, at a more-or-less idyllic sleep-away summer camp. there’s like 40 different camp counselor characters i’ve fleshed out at this point, although i tend to focus on the same few throughout all the iterations. i’ve got a self-insert character in there as well who doesn’t show up a ton (lmao??), but i usually have her doing cute stuff in the background.
ANYWAY.
typically, whenever i have a new idea or want to change things about the story, i leave the old document the way it is and create a new one, so i have docs from like, 2014 sitting in my drive (actually they’re probably older than 2014!! since i think i must have transferred everything over to drive in 2014, and that’s when i graduated COLLEGE). lemme tell ya, it’s a TRIP to go back through some of those older docs.
i know we’re supposed to HATE THE CRINGE or wtfever but reading through my writing over this past summer really highlighted to me that this ‘story’ is actually more of a diary? not in the traditional sense, obvs, but i really pour out my opinions and views and things i’m going through while writing this story, particularly when i’m writing through different characters’ points of view.
DON’T GET ME WRONG. IT IS EXTREMELY EMBARASSING. ESPECIALLY those early years. for a story with several gay characters (including the main character!!), it was SO STRAIGHT for SO LONG. i think there’s one?? established gay relationship that i never cover in the story itself but have in my notes?? bisexuality?? what’s that?? all the pretty girls are MEAN and SLUTS!! romantic relationships between women appeared to be INCONCIEVEABLE to me in high school.
anyway. very embarrassing. but like, makes it soooo clear how i viewed the world at that time. and as i grew as a person i’d come back to this story and change things to fit my new experiences.
like i can tell i wrote a certain scene when i was still in college, because it reflected something that happened to me IN college. i wrote the scene from the point of the main character, watching and commenting on something happening to my self-insert character (just a dude flirting with her LOL but also :’) y’all i had. NO experience. with anything). again. SO CRINGE but also this was clearly me looking at my life from a distance and going “i think i want to be perceived like this—being flirted with in a way others can see is something i want.’ there were lots of scenes that took place in my freshman dorm room that i more or less translated into the story, because they felt very ‘normal college experience!!’ to me, and i felt like a normal, ‘cool’ kid for having experienced them :’’’’’’’’’’)
blessedly, i have grown, and so has this ‘story’ and its characters.
i have several huge character sheets (40 characters is a lot to keep track of) that detail relationships between characters and other random details, and adding ‘is bisexual’ to my self-insert’s notes wasn’t in itself a huge detail (by the time i added sexualities in my character notes, i’d known i was bi for a bit), but re-reading it every time i went through all my notes was probably pretty validating actually?? it’s also interesting to me to see the evolution of my self-insert as a character—at first, she (i?) starts out the same age as the main character (high school or early college, depending on when i wrote it), and is kind of ‘in the know’ about the current drama or whatever is going on.
as i got older, i split the story more clearly between the younger camp counselors, and the older ones. i moved my self insert out of the main character’s (again, a younger counselor) circle, because it just didn’t make sense for her to have the same relationships with that age group anymore. i found myself being able to more and more easily write for the older counselor characters, and my self-insert fit there (obviously) too.
NOW there’s such a big age gap between the youngest and oldest counselors it comes so naturally to have my self-insert character give advice to the younger ones, and for the younger characters to view her (and the other older counselors) as a mentor and a ‘real adult’ who has her shit together. like?? ayyyyyy that’s kind of cool of me, actually?? like it doesn’t feel that way in real life all the time, but looking at it this way helps to put it in perspective.
and the way i describe romantic relationships??? for sooooo long i described my self-insert as ‘hooking up’ with whomever (a dude. always a dude) and usually had them keeping things on the down-low. when i most recently went in and changed things up, i decided that, no actually, my self insert (me???) has a hawt butch gf who is really cool and has cool muscles and is tough but also sweet and a lil shy!! fuck it!!!
idk if that’s what the kids these days call ‘manifesting’ but that’s what i’m calling it.
it’s fun to be self indulgent and WANT THINGS??? it seems like i did this briefly in high school, based on my writing at that time, but there was some shame associated with self indulgence at that point in my life, so i was pretty passive about wanting things. not to mention?? the things i wanted in high school were actually not so great. so. kind of a wash there, i guess.
anyway!!!! there really isn’t a point to this reflection, i kind of just wanted to write it down? i’ve been trying little by little to not close myself off and isolate and instead be open with my thoughts!? an unknown concept on tumblr dot com i know, but i’m chronically late to the party so give me a break!!!
if you made it to the bottom of this post: congratulations. but also: why??? but ALSO: thank you for reading and i love you 😌🥰
