#and that's to cope with my weight and maybe homophobic in my country

[thevagabondexpress]

reasons for a character to be angsty *other than* "abusive/deadbeat parents," "was bullied/assaulted," "queer and living with homophobic parents," or "someone died"

okay. hear me out. maybe it's just me but i'm tired of seeing the very heavy, triggering backstories listed above used to create brooding darkness within a character. now, that's not to say you can't use those. i've seen a couple authors use them and handle them very well. but i feel like they've been overused and, for the majority, not handled particularly well most of the time. hence, i've created a list of alternative reasons for your fictional charater to be a 'lil angsty without that weight of trauma that could be fumbled easily if not handled carefully. feel free to use these and share this around, that's what it's there for. feel free also to provide suggestions in the comments and i'll add them to the list.

∘ time period specific generation z angst: "the planet is turning into a pressure cooker, everything is on fire, democracy is crumbling like a dry pound cake, and nobody who has any power is doing anything because they only care about making money."

∘ habitual insomniac who just can't f***ing get their sleep schedule together. they're snarky and brooding because they're so. f***ing. tired.

∘ eldest sibling angst.

∘ middle sibling angst.

∘ youngest sibling angst.

∘ existential gender/sexuality/educational/career/faith/insert here crisis

∘ crisis of desired vs. perceived identity: "I want people to see me this way but all they ever see is this."

∘ they have a goal. they're really motivated. they're trying hard and they know they're good at what they do. but for some reason either they face consistent roadblocks from other people, or other people just refuse to acknowledge it.

∘ wanting something they can't have, but not in a whiny "he's so hot and I want to go out with him but he won't look at me" sort of way. no, as in, "I want to go visit my family in [insert country] but I don't have the time or money to go and I haven't seen my cousin in years she must be walking and drawing on the walls by now."

∘ unhealthy workaholic with a deep dark secret: that research project, etc. they've been obsessing and staying up late over and pushing everyone away for . . .

∘ sympathy angst: character has a friend/relative that cannot or will not acknowledge the emotions they ought to be feeling, so this character starts feeling the emotions for them

∘ character is caring for someone who is injured/ill (they don't even have to be dying, or in critical condition) and it's taking a toll

∘ character has been in one profession for a long time. now they've quit, moved on, and are doing something else. maybe they've retired. but they miss their old job, plus they find themselves falling back into the old habits. they worked that job so long they don't know how to be anything else.

∘ generational gothic: the character has uncovered a long-buried secret. maybe about their family. maybe about their place of work. maybe about their hometown, or the house they bought. whatever it is, everyone else seems to have forgotten it, and moved on. but they know. and they must cope with the burden of this aged secret thrown over their shoulders.

∘ performative angst: character is really into one of the fine arts. or building cars. or a martial art. or history. or science. whatever. point is, they develop angst deliberately as a performative state because they think it sounds cool.

∘ something the character has always believed to be a concrete fact turns out to be just another terrible fiction.

∘ character discovers a truth about themselves they had not previously realized. now they must analyze it, and come to terms with it. ∘ career-based moral/ethical angst: I do what I have to do because it's necessary and important (or because it's what i've always known, or both). but is it really good, or right? could there be a better way?

∘ time-period specific 1960's system-directed anger, whether that's to do with the civil rights movement or the war or both.

∘ character has moved to a new place. now, they must adjust to new societal expectations and customs, and possibly new food and culture as well. they feel strange and out of place, and miss their homeland.

∘ the character recently ended a relationship (romantic or otherwise) that was no longer functioning. they're the person who ended it, because they could see that things weren't working out anymore, but they're also very aware that the "it's not working out" went both ways and is much their fault as their friend/partner's. hence, they've gone and convinced themself that they were the bad guy, even though they really weren't.

∘ character had a massive falling out with a beloved friend or relative and now the two can't get along. they can barely be in the same room and it's dragging on the both of them and everyone around them.

#character creation #characterization #trope alternatives #writer thoughts and answers #a little pinch of writing advice

[keiynantrieshisbest-blog]

My First Post

The reason I created this little ole blog is because, after having a mental breakdown at a deserted bus stop, minutes after watching Love, Simon for the second time (which by the way, wonderful movie, please go support it in theaters), is because my gender is something I’ve been questioning for much of my life and seems to be all that’s on my mind lately. So let’s start with yesterday’s breakdown. Actually let’s go back to Friday when I watched Love, Simon for the first time. I’d gone with a couple friends, and I had been anticipating this movie for a very long time. Ordered the book, read the book and re-read the book all in anticipation. The movie was wonderful, everything I’d hoped for and so much more, completely exceeded my expectations. I cried. A LOT. By the end (won’t spoil it in case you haven’t seen the movie yet which why are you still reading this go watch the freaking movie it’s amazing) I was a mess, actually sobbing out loud, a mix between a laugh and a sob ripping itself from my chest over and over as my fellow movie goers clapped loudly and cheered (it was opening night after all so you get the most enthusiastic folks). Finally (Or rather unfortunately, because I wanted the movie and that moment to last forever) the credits rolled and the lights came on. I was a complete mess in every sense of the word, my best friend seemed a little shocked saying how I had actually been sobbing in the seat next to her. After the last names had passed and the screen had gone fully and truly dark (I had insisted on staying for the credits because 1. I wanted the moment to last as long as possible and 2. I try to always stay for credits out of respect for the people who spent so long making the movie) we left and got a lyft back to our dorms (I’m a freshman in college). The whole ride back I was riding a high from the movie, basking in that feeling and going over each moment in my head. As I was sitting there though I started to get an un-easy feeling as I wondered, “why, exactly, did this movie about two boys falling in love mean so much to me?” I kind of shrugged it off but I felt this sort of frenzied anxiety in the pit of my stomach the rest of the night. My best friend and I walked back to our building after saying goodbye to the other friends who’d gone with us. We went up to one of our guy friends’ rooms to chill with some of our other friends. I was telling him about how the movie was and how much I’d loved it. I told him that I didn’t think I’d ever see a better movie, that I’d peaked. He said of course not, that someday I’d watch a movie called Love, Jenny or something about two girls falling in love and that I’d love that movie even more (this may be a good time, if you haven’t already figured, to tell you that I was assigned female at birth and that my college friends know me as a bi, cis girl). I knew as soon as he said it that he was wrong, I wouldn’t love that movie more. Because for some unexplainable reason, despite being a bi “girl” I don’t relate to lesbians or stories about lesbians. I always was interested in stories about gay men and sought out those stories, got excited and animated about those stories, those people or characters. Take my book collection for example. I love to collect books and so far I have two queer romance stories (which is very sad, not a ton of gay fiction out there, either that or I’m terrible at finding it). Both these books are gay love stories about boys. And for the same reason I only own books about gay BOYS falling in love, is the same reason I was indescribably excited for Love, Simon not just because it’s the first real love story about gay youth I’ve ever seen but because it was a love story about two BOYS. Because it literally felt like the story was made for me in mind, that’s how much I related to Simon. Only I’m not Simon, I’m biologically female. Only I think I want to be like Simon. I’ve had this unexplainable longing to be a boy for probably as long as I can remember. Only I never once considered I might be trans until recently because my gender expression has always seemed to align fine with female. I’ve experience dysphoria before, but never to the extent described online. Don’t get me wrong, when I do get it it is all consuming and horrifically painful. But I never experienced it like this constant thing, dictating everything I did. I can remember one night in particular where I so badly felt that my genitals were wrong, that I was meant to have a penis and if I didn’t find a way to get one it might kill me. It was kind of like having a phantom limb, something that i just felt so badly was supposed to be there, and the thought that I never would have that tore me up. But that was one night and I don’t get these all encompassing thoughts on the regular. Another example would be how I once had a dream I had a penis, it was a pretty awesome dream and when I woke up and was faced with the entirely too real fact that I did not in fact have a penis and it’d only been a dream. I was upset by this. But again this happened once and it’s not something I experience regularly. I guess I felt (feel) as though since I’m not crippled day to day with horrible dysphoria, I couldn’t possibly be trans. Growing up I liked dresses and barbies and pink and anything girly. I had been the perfect little girl, not a sign of anything out of the ordinary. I never insisted I wasn’t a girl, I never refused to wear feminine clothing or participate in feminine activities. I had a favorite skirt that was layers of ruffled pink fabric with hearts covering every inch, i wore it often. I think it was maybe that I did enjoy these feminine things, have always enjoyed feminine things, and that maybe I didn’t see the issue of being stuck in the wrong gender because, as far as I was concerned, I was getting to play with the toys I wanted and dress how I wanted. I don’t think I understood what gender was, or at least I wasn’t confronted with it. Not until I grew older. Once puberty started to affect my body, that’s when I think I started to realize something was wrong. I remember how one of my sister’s friends pointed out my leg hair and told me I need to shave my legs. Because that was normal of girls. Until she pointed that out I hadn’t been concerned with my leg hair in the least. I just remember feeling a really deep sense of shame when she pointed that out and it wasn’t long after that, that I asked my mom to help me shave my legs for the first time. I began to shave quite religiously after that. There’s another instance I remember quite clearly in my mind that probably happened around the same time. I was with a friend in the cafeteria getting ice cream. She had commented that you could see my breasts through my shirt (my breasts had started to bud and were now noticeable through my shirt). Once again I was filled with a deep sense of shame and embarrassment. It seems that my gender wasn’t really something that concerned me until people started to point out that I wasn’t meeting the standards of “my” gender. I hit middle school, which yikes for anybody am I right? I started to gain weight, a lot of weight. Probably a way to cope. I started wearing big loose t-shirts and shorts constantly and I always wore my hair up in a bun. I felt perpetually uncomfortable like nothing about me was right and everything felt wrong. Looking back I think maybe I thought it was just the weight making me uncomfortable (not easy being overweight ever, especially in middle school) but now I think it was a lot more than that, that maybe I was dealing with some heavy dysphoria at the fact that my body was changing and not in the way I wanted it to. So I think I always knew something was up. Freshman year of high school I moved to a new country and I met a boy I very much liked. I decided I was gonna do whatever I could to make this boy like me. I started losing weight and wearing make up and doing all in my power to be this perfect girl. This is also when I started to become confronted with the fact that I was bi and liked girls. I was homophobic from the environment I’d grownup in and had a lot of internalized homophobia. I remember my best friend at the time talking about same sex couples. I’d declared that it was a sin and that I didn’t care what other people did but that I still thought it was wrong. She’d said she didn’t agree, that she thought love was love and people should marry whoever they loved. She sort of started me on the path of accepting myself. I started to explore my sexuality. My sister introduced me to tumblr and I made a blog, making lots of cringey posts about the animes I watched and the straight couple I hardcore shipped. Then I found the gay side of tumblr, endless fanart and fanfic about gay couples from shows I watched. I didn’t have the words or capability to understand why I felt so connected to these characters or why I felt so much reading these stories and looking at this art. For some reason I became all consumed with gay BOYS. I wondered if I was a pervert, someone who fetishized gay boys like I’d seen in so many posts. It became a point of discomfort I ignored rather than confront and continued to consume as much gay media and content about gay BOYS as possible, happily ignoring the nagging in the back of my head of why that might be. As I grew into a high schooler and moved again and started a new school, I’d finally seemed to come to terms with my sexuality. Or at least I knew I was bi, had even whispered it to myself alone in the dark bedroom that was supposed to be mine but I didn’t feel comfortable in yet. Now that the sexuality question was out of the way, my brain decided to tackle the next topic: my gender. I came across a post by someone I followed describing how they were genderfluid. I’d never heard the term before and as they described how they’d always felt like a boy in high school, about having this desperate want to be a boy, I thought oh! That’s just like me. Genderfluid became a term I would use to describe myself for the rest of high school and now into college. I decided that I liked being a girl, didn’t want to give that part of myself up. I decided I sometimes felt like a girl (because i enjoyed feminine things and connected with my feminine side), sometimes I felt like neither (coming from my desire for gender to not just exist at all “it’s just so stupid and meaningless” I often thought, “gender doesn’t even really exist so why should be care about it at all”) and sometimes feeling like a boy. I still have my doubts as I write what seems to be a coming out post to myself. And i guess to whoever’s reading this if anyone’s reading it. Doubts that maybe I am genderfluid because I can be content as a girl at times, have lived content as a girl. But see the thing is genderfluid felt like the bandaid I used to cover up my gender crisis. It kept everything from spilling out and for awhile I was satisfied with the label, really believed it. I’m currently in my second semester of my first year of college and lately I’ve been extremely anxious and unmotivated. And lately genderlfuid has felt wrong. So wrong. As I was explaining to my wonderful friends I met on this site so long ago who helped me come out to my sister as both bi and genderfluid, I didn’t feel like genderlfuid was right. Have really been feeling for awhile now that it isn’t right, that I never connected to it the way I was supposed to. It seemed that a label was supposed to click and just feel so perfectly right and genderfluid just didn’t. So I after watching Love, Simon the first time and having all these sorts of thoughts swirl through my head I decided to text one of these online friends whos boyfriend is a transguy. I asked her, “can I ask how [her boyfriend] knew he was trans?” She was wonderful and said of course and sent me his snapchat. He was at work though so I didn’t end up getting to talk to him. I think some part of me started to panic though because I was seriously starting to ask myself this because of how I’d felt on the ride home the night before. I ignored it and instead went and bought bus tokens and rode alone to the movie theater to watch Love, Simon again. Did i mention I was by myself?! A huge deal because I have really bad anxiety and never do anything alone like that. So I go and I sit smack dab in the middle of the theater in the perfect seat and can’t even bring myself to be ashamed of how shamelessly I took the middle seat when I’m all alone because I’m just bursting with excitement. And it was almost as wonderful as watching it the first time or at least it would have been if I hadn’t felt that same frenzied anxiety deep in the pit of my stomach. It was really strange and I couldn’t figure out why I was feeling this way. I still loved the movie and I cried quite a lot again. Particularly in all the parts with Simon and his family. I left the theater feeling a bit weird but happy because I love the movie. I rushed over to the bus stop because I mixed up the times and thought this other bus was the one I needed. I realized it wasn’t and that I was gonna have to wait a long time out in the cold. I was feeling kind of emotional from the movie so I pulled out my phone and started to record myself talking to kill the time. “Sometimes I wish I could live in a moment. A perfectly suspended moment. Where nothing is wrong and everything goes perfect. Everything is so dissatisfying that I wonder if I’ll ever find anything that feels remotely like it’s supposed to and I don’t know that I will.” Then I moved on starting to imagine how I’d come out to my other sister who I’ve yet to come out to. I won’t include that because it’s very personal but I started to get teary. I shut my phone off and went back to waiting for the bus. But suddenly I burst into tears. For no apparent reason and I couldn’t stop crying. I started to think some bad thoughts about killing myself, that nothing was worth it and I should just stop. My counselor and I had made a list of people I could call if I was thinking suicidal thoughts again. So i pulled my phone out and called my sister (the one I’m out to) because she’s on the top of my list. She picked up right away and I was still full on sobbing, tears running down my face and she could hear it immediately. I said I couldn’t stop crying and I didn’t know why. She thought something had happened I said nothing had happened, I just burst into tears and I couldn’t stop. We talked for a bit, I say talked but I mostly stuttered out words between sobs without making any sense to her or myself. I said I didn’t know why I was crying. I finally said i had to hang up so I could calm down before my bus got here because talking to her was only making me cry harder. Only even after hanging up and promising I was okay and I’d text her when I got back I still couldn’t stop sobbing. I told myself to stop, you’re fine you have to stop. I pulled it together long enough to climb on the bus and hopefully the driver didn’t notice I’d been crying, luckily no one was on the bus. I spent the thirty minute bus ride back to my dorm desperately trying to hold back tears and staring at myself at my reflection in the window across from me. My head was swirling with thoughts and I was so disoriented by it all I couldn’t figure out why I had seemed to just have a breakdown. I arrived back at my building and when I walked inside I was bombarded with my friends who were sitting in the lobby. They were all so cheerful saying hey! Where’ve you been. One of my friends coming up to give me a side hug and stand next to me. I could barely keep a smile on my face, I felt on the verge of crying again. I barely said anything and did my best to slip away heading for the elevators. My best friend (who’s also my roommate) jumped up from her seat and said she was going to come up with me. We rode the elevator to our room and she talked excitedly the whole way there, I did my best to respond but I felt so completely out of it. She ran off to the bathroom and I sat numbly at my desk, plugging my phone in as it was about to die and feeling tears well up in my eyes again. I wanted to call my sister but two of our other roommates were there and I knew I’d burst into tears the second I heard her voice. My best friend returned and she asked me if I was going to come down. I said I needed to call my sister and my voice was shaking in that crying way. She asked if I was okay. I said nothing happened but I needed to call my sister. She tired to come up with where I could go. I asked if she thought our friend who lives in a single would lend me his room. She asked him for me and guided me out of our room and to the elevators. He was already in there, he gave me a hug and we rode up to his floor. He handed me the keys to his room and they said to text them if I needed anything. Then they went back downstairs. My friends are good like that. I went to his room, he had on his purple light so the room was dark except for that. I plugged in my phone and climbed on his bed. I called my sister. We talked for awhile and I started crying again. We discussed why I might’ve cried. She said it’s an emotional movie for me so I was probably just feeling a lot of things from it. And that was definitely part of it but it was also more than that, and I knew that it was more than that. I told her in tears that I just wanted to be out. I said I didn’t know who I was. She didn’t understand, I didn’t understand. After I’d calmed down a bit I said I should go because I didn’t know what else to say. After we hung up I cried again. I cried and I cried and I cried. I listened to the Love, Simon soundtrack and I sat in the dark and cried for a very long time. I still feel a bit confused about it all but I think part of me realized I was realizing that I’m not genderfluid, that I might be trans. And that was a lot, and with that revelation the bandaid cracked and everything I’ve been feeling just kind of came pouring out. I think I knew that I didn’t just relate to Simon because he’s queer but because he’s a boy. And that freaked me out and it scared me. And my mind didn’t know what to do with that information. I spent the whole day today watching videos about trans guys and researching as much information as possible. And I made this blog, for some reason. I guess it’s a way to explore my identity and figure out if I really am trans. So if you got this far, thanks for listening. And talk to you soon.

Love, Keiynan

#transquestioning #personal