#teengirlnet

[deathbyvalentine]

DISCUSSION 6/3/16

Prompt 2&3&4:  Coven dissolves &  Girls back home &  What happened in the attic.

Short Story.

There’s something different about them. 

It was like their code was glitching. When they had left for college in the autumn, they were still in sync. Their movements seemed continuous, feeding off each other, mirroring and flowing. It had always been that way, since they were children together. Once unnerving, it had faded into something natural, rhythmic. 

Until now. 

Their glances towards each other were ill-timed, their non-verbal twin language dissolved into mouthing words at each other across the dinner table. A fracture had appeared in their united front, and the fault lines were all over them. Their mother fretted the way she always did, running the tea-towel through her reddened fingers over and over as she watched them poke at their food, their disinterest plain.

She worried that perhaps college had been a bad influence on them, as she had suspected it would be. Perhaps they were experimenting with drugs, or infatuated with some boy who had caused them to fight. Their mother had surely been a teenage girl once, but these two were aliens to her now. She was convinced it was because they had changed in some small, subtle way her probing eyes couldn’t detect, never once thinking that it was perhaps due to the haze of time that had fogged her memory of exactly what teenagerdom was. 

She mostly remembered the twins as small. As fluttering birds with fragile bones, and her terrified of the world breaking them. As children they had thought themselves immortal, as all children do, and that scared her more than anything in the world.

They scared her in a different way now. With their strangeness, with the foreignness they brought into her house. With the whispers that had replaced the giggles she would hear through their bedroom door. With the texting each other while sat with their shoulders touching. 

But mostly with the utter self assurance that kept their backs ramrod straight, as though electricity coursed through their veins instead of blood. There may be fracture lines across them, but the glue holding them together seemed strong. 

It was college what had done it, she reasoned. What else could it have been?

They had been ready for college, Eve and Vanessa. They had dreamed of it since they were thirteen years old, scanning through prospectus every year, picking through university webpages with a fine toothed comb, debating majors and changing them in every conversation. When the time finally came, it ran as smoothly as it could have. They would be attending the same institution, out of state. They would be sharing a room, as they always had. However, they would be majoring in things as different as their interests. 

Eve, always the vivacious one, had chosen Drama. She thrived on stage, with eyes resting on her, with the chance to truly shine. She lived and breathed her characters, becoming them and knowing them as she knew herself. She belonged to dusty green rooms, blinding lights, blood in dance shoes and perhaps, most of all, applause.

Vanessa had never felt the call of the stage. What she liked best of all was the stark whiteness of a lab. She liked the promise of discovery that lay in every test, every file. She dreamt of a day where her name would be printed in a journal, whatever she had discovered forming the base of knowledge that would be handed down for generations. It was a self-indulgent dream, one she revisited frequently, lying on her bed in the fantastical evenings that made up so much of her semester.

They hadn’t planned to join a sorority. Why would they? They had their studies, and they had each other. Their worlds were very small, and that was how they thought they liked it. 

The first thing Eve noticed was the shine of her hair. It was like ink spilling over her shoulders, obscuring her face like a sweeping curtain. Vanessa noticed her nails, the black paint chipped, covered in teeth marks. She swung her legs off her chair, and approached with a walk that did not apologise for her height.

Her name was Indigo, and she was the head of a small sorority. They weren’t the biggest, she told the twins, smoke curling from a blackberry flavoured cigarette. They weren’t the richest. But they were the best. 

She pointed out ex-girls who weren’t politicians or celebrities, but writers, scientists, artists. They prided themselves on individualism. There wasn’t any hazing, there was no humiliating auditions. You came to a party, if all of the current members liked you, you were in. 

Vanessa took the flyer, and tucked in inside her folder. She had already heard the rumours about Gamma Sigma. That they were less of a sorority and more of a holding pen for juvenile delinquents. That they took the girls that nobody else wanted. That they were untouchable. That they were demon worshipers. 

Her interest was piqued. 

The house was on the edge of campus, as far away from the center of things as it was possible to be. Eve frowned at it, as though it could somehow explain itself to her. It wasn’t the shining marble and Hellenic architecture of the other sororities. It was older, mid-century Gothic, all wood and turrets. The porch stairs creaked when she put her weight onto them, in a way that made her wince. 

Vanessa didn’t seem quite as spooked. She rapped on the door smartly with her knuckles, cocked her head as footsteps approached over the soft, muffled music, heard through the wood. Eve wasn’t sure what she was expecting from a college party. Her high school ones had been bad enough, hidden out of sight from the adults. Drugs and booze in no short supply, sex happening wherever the lovers could find a dark corner, tears and tantrums simply part of the decoration, to be discussed and dissected on Monday morning. 

But when the door opened, there were no unconscious bodies lining the halls. The music was loud, but it wasn’t deafening. There was just Indigo, smelling faintly of blackberries, and smiling. 

Sometimes, Vanessa thinks back on it, years later. She’ll be washing the dishes, and the thought will strike her, quick and as careless as lightening. 

We killed a boy.

We killed a boy with a pretty mouth and thick eyelashes. We snuffed his life out like it didn’t matter at all, because it didn’t, not really. Not like ours. We were vibrant and crackling, and he was a soft breeze. He was barely there.

Vanessa had met him inbetween classes, in a building she wasn’t supposed to be in. He was an artist, and ink-stained. She was looking for a professor’s office, piece of paper clutched in her hand, the scrawl almost impossible to read. When he glanced up, and smiled, she almost had a flash of foreboding, like she could already see the attic and the dust. But instead, the moment passed, and he offered to show her the way. It’s odd, how there’s so many meetings in life, that very almost didn’t occur. By a stroke of luck, or chance, or fate, they do occur, and we all have to live with the consquences, and the wondering whatifwhatifwhatif. 

It was getting to spring, and Indigo was getting restless. Her boredom was dangerous, and watching her brought to mind a lion pacing in a cage. It had gotten worse since meeting Eve. The two seemed to feed on each other’s energy, Charybdis and Syclla. Living in the sorority had started to feel like an accident waiting to happen.

Vanessa was relieved when a Spring Break party was suggested. Something to burn off the excess, to start anew. She didn’t think twice when Indigo told her to bring Asher. Why would she? She was allowed to have friends who were boys, and allowed to invite them into the shadowy house. And he accepted, of course. They were rarely parted, these days.

The blood wouldn’t come out of the floorboards. They scrubbed and scrubbed, all of them, with vinegar and bleach and woodsoap. It wouldn’t shift. Indigo declared it mattered little, it was in the attic, and who would even look there? The police hadn’t went further than the kitchen, with their unexpectant questions and glazed looks. They were obviously uncomfortable in a space that was so utterly girl without apology. Indigo had stared them down, until they squirmed, and left. Vanessa watched as Eve couldn’t meet her eyes.

What else was left to do but go home for the Summer Break?

[deathbyvalentine]

I know you want me to tell you girlhood is some soft fragile thing. Full of flowers Perfume and pretty things. But There is hardness here too. They kick at the chains that constrain them until they snap, scattering links further than wedding confetti. There's the taste of blood, from all the words bitten back. There is the burn in her limbs, from running, running, running towards something better than her town. There is the burn in her throat from screaming when she gets there. She clenches her hands into fists, and doesn't open them into a welcoming palm. When they say they hate you, they mean it.  They write in diaries with such fury, the pen rips right through the page.  The thud thud thudding you hear, could be their heartbeats, could be their hands.  There is hardness even here within a girl.

Teen Girl (A.V.P)

Part 2 of 3 in the Teen Series. 

[deathbyvalentine]

The lake is still now. No ripples occur Visibly.   There is stagnation Underneath the surface. Out of sight. Out of mind. One year later, the narrative says. He cups her magic face with infinite tenderness He is willing to wait for his fairy dust to be blown away For her to see him as the poison he may or may not be. The moment doesn't come. She smiles, and after an eternity. He does too. He has never been more acutely aware of how his body takes up space He has never been as conscious about the size of his hands And he wishes to fade Not like a virus Not like an illness But like a ghost Something that leaves no mark. She's his rock The brick that makes up his foundation. The base on which everything is built. He thought previously perhaps the word sister could be a soft thing. Lost easily to the wind. Now he knows it's a promise a blood oath a covenant. She has never been 'that girl' before. She can't wrap these whispers around her like a cloak They do not keep her warm They do not comfort her. The full story grates against her skin. It makes her bleed. But she doesn't twitch. She, the sorry stirrer of this mess. She, disturber of stagnation. Forgiveness doesn't come from a high school bell Signalling the end of times Echoing a mad woman's rambles about vaccines Making each arm prick tingle.

The Fever (Sweated Out) (a.v.p)

For, as ever, @ammapreakers.

[lyrasoxford]

I’ve been thinking about this a while and discussing it with @elinashe a little but I’ve noticed a trend on tumblr that makes me super uncomfortable as a person who is working class/lower class and lives in poverty.

Now let me say first that living in poverty is terrible and I don’t recommend it. I don’t romanticise it. However it is an oppressed class, and in of itself does not perpetuate classism as, you know, it’s the oppressed group. However upper class/the wealthy absolute perpetuates classism and other forms of oppression. The elite class is actively harmful towards others.

That being said…

How come it’s only ever upper classes I see romanticised and analysed on tumblr? How come that’s the only class I ever see meta/graphics/discussion on? I never see posts about how poverty shaped a character, while I constantly see ones about wealth being a rich character’s downfall. I see edits making upper classes look like a desirable life style despite how oppressive it is, while I don’t even see poverty acknowledged. Poor characters get that bit of their background ignored constantly. Adam Parrish. Libby Day. Richard Papen. Tom Riddle. So so many others.

If you’re going to romanticise things, at least do it to the one that doesn’t oppress other classes. As a poor person, it hurts to see the very things that hurt me made into a weird goal while finding no true representation for myself.

[volchitza]

There’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls X Evie, Taylor, Alison from The Leftovers

Let’s say your town is just as fucked up as everywhere else is; it’s exceptional for the fact that nobody disappeared from it, but when you look around you’re kind of like “Why? I don’t know why this is. I don’t know what’s so special about where I live.” What kind of emotional effect would that have on you?

The girls were really angry about the exceptionalism. They sing the Miracle anthem but they sing it snidely and snarkily and with some degree of teenage rebellion. They faked their disappearance. And obviously this is a horrible thing to do — it goes well beyond a teenage prank, to put your parents through this. What if they staged it for a higher cause?

Damon Lindelof for Variety

[addyhanlon]

camille, marian, amma. 

[addyhanlon]

cariatides → addyhanlon 

also i opened a twitter account for myself! you can check it out :) 

[deathbyvalentine]

You know their expectations of you. You know how they think your fists were meant for hurting, how your body was made to compete, how the only words your lips can speak to girls is ones that will wound, in one way or another. Your body is poison, and it could kill any one of the girls you've sworn to protect. You think of the cage your sister has, one built of stockings and lipgloss, her hands bound together by whispers of 'slut'. You think of your own, and how you suppose to them, it might look like freedom. That was then, you suppose. Last week, your whispered your greatest joy and greatest fear to your sister, protected by blankets, by smothering night, where nobody could gaze at your jaw and assume it's curves were masculine. When the words hung in the air, sizzling, she replied. "I've always wanted a sister." "You've always had one." You don't have to envy, any more. You are not on the outside looking in, the fence separating them, now, you realise, was never there.  Your girlhood is tangled up with theirs, wild and freeing. You are good for them, you know. They love you, too, the one they call sister, sweetheart, EliEliEli, until your name breaks apart in their mouths, and tastes like honey. You were never man. You were never poison. You were girl from the moment you stepped foot on an earth not ready for you. You don't need to change, to be who you always were. The lake has nothing for you.

Eli Of Troy (A.V.P)