When I was in high school (and middle school, for that matter), I was a super depressing writer. I was also a pretty depressed person, which you’ve already heard a lot about so I won’t go into details, but needless to say, that influenced my writing heavily. So I thought it would be fun to do a compare/contrast thingy with a novel I wrote my junior year of high school, “Reticence”, and with the short story I wrote last semester, “Super.” Both pieces of work dealt with the theme of being alone, although one is set in a regular high school and one is set in a San Fransisco where superheroes are just another part of the day.

Plot

Reticence: Main character Violet has just broken up with her boyfriend of a year, and he’s not taking it very well. However, Violet has fully moved on, striking up an internet romance with a mysterious boy from across the state. Then he becomes distant, breaks her heart, then a friend tries to commit suicide, then her ex boyfriend’s abusive father kicks him out, then she has a horrible fight with her older brother, then her best friend comes out as gay, then internet boy breaks her heart again, her grades start to slip, her parents ground her and constantly berate her about said grades, and there is no happy ending. Moral: Violet realizes that although she’ll still be sad even after everything has calmed down, she will be less sad if she reaches out and talks to people about her problems rather than bottling it all up.

Super: Main character Sophie is roommates with three prominent superheroes, though she has no such special powers. She’s knee deep in second-round edits for her breakout novel, but her roommates are far from her intellectual equals, so between work and home, she’s very much isolated. But then she meets Captain Chaos, an enigmatic, intelligent, witty supervillain, and things get much more interesting. Moral: you’ll always be alone if you don’t reach out, and being impulsive can be the difference between happiness and seclusion.

Character

Violet: Copes with problems by driving herself to an isolated, off the beaten path desert area and screaming at the sky, then pretending like nothing happened. When pressure rises, Violet withdraws as her life falls apart around her. All her actions and emotions are directly related and attached to a boy she’s never even met.

Sophie: Copes with problems with sarcasm and determination. When pressure rises, she motors through and keeps on keeping on. All her actions and emotions are directly related and attached to her own goals and dreams.

Style

Reticence:

I like to think of myself as an independent person. But really, even the most independent of people need friends. And to be liked. Loved is preferred, of course, but liked is the bare necessity.

So as much as I’d like to say how maturely I took the situation and how it did not emotionally affect me at all, I can’t.

“I never want to talk to you again!” Looking back, the phrasing he used seemed almost childish.

“Fine! God, you’re so annoying!” I growled back. I would be chagrined about raising my voice in public later, but right now I was passed caring. My friend Anthony tried to conceal a smirk as I stomped off in the opposite direction of the tall figure of my ex boyfriend.

“Violet!” He jogged to catch up to me. “So how long do you think it’ll take for him to beg your forgiveness this time? My bet’s on a week.”

“Ugh, I don’t even care anymore,” I assured him. But I did. Just because Jon was my ex didn’t mean I wanted nothing to do with him. We’d been pretty good friends before, but now he struggled to remain civil. In the past three months since I’d broken up with him, he’d declared himself completely over me three times, and refused to talk to me five times, all lasting periods of two to three weeks. His metaphorical plant was stubborn and unwilling to perk up. As annoying and as immature as he was being, I was desperate for my friend back. So maybe I’m not as independent as I like to think.

Super:

I woke up with a bad taste in my mouth. You know, that dry, stale taste of mouth germs after you’ve been sleeping for too long. I kept my eyes closed as I forced my tongue around my mouth, letting it moisten the cracks in my lips. Something was wrong. I opened my eyes.

“God dammit.” I growled. Captain Chaos, one of the most notoriously slippery super villains my three superhero roommates ever encountered, glanced back at me from where he sat in front of a series of large monitors. The monitors were watching said roommates, keeping track of their rescue progress, I assumed. Captain Chaos wore his usual outfit; light grey spandex with dark blue cape, foot-coverings, gloves, mask, and, of course, dark blue over-the-tights underwear. Evaluating my situation, I found it to be highly unpleasant, even overlooking the inevitable “told ya so” conversation I was sure to have with my roommates later, if I got out of this. I was duct taped to a wooden chair, all my appendages tied down to, presumably, dissuade escape attempts. The wooden chair was suspended by a series of wires which, upon further inspection, was connected to a sort of pulley system. Beneath me was a tank. Inside the tank were sharks. Bull sharks, to be exact. I knew this because I’d once spent two hours on Wikipedia -in an attempt to avoid editing, of course- looking up different kinds of sharks. Know thy enemy, right? Bull sharks, apparently, were known for unpredictable, aggressive behavior. One reared its short snout upwards in my direction. Great.

“So.”

“So.” he responded, not turning. From my elevated position, I could see the top of his head, an expanse of hair contained by his mask on either side. It was nice hair, from what I could tell. Dark and thick. I couldn’t accurately evaluate its texture, however, because his aforementioned mask obscured a good section of it. The small section of the supervillain that I could see reminded me of my new character, Ted. The only thing I’d really decided on for him so far was that he liked to read poet biographies in bubble baths, a quirk that never ceased to amuse me. I tried to concentrate on Ted, instead of the seven hundred pound monsters wiggling around beneath me.

“You tied me to a chair.”

“Yeah.”

“And suspended me over a tank of sharks.”

“Yeah.”

“I hate sharks.”

“Sorry.” He turned around a little.

 

Conclusions

I am a much healthier person overall. I’m sure a lot of you will recognize the real life parallels from Reticence’s plot; the idea for that book was to take all the upsetting events of the previous two years of my life and force my character to deal with them all in the period of a few months. The final product wasn’t pretty. Though I was never as completely dysfunctional as Violet (I never let my grades suffer as a result of emotional trauma: I never wanted my parents alerted of said trauma), it’s clear that through this comparison that I have much more balance in my life in now. All things considered, I’d rather be Sophie any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Plus, my writing has gotten a lot better, and considering that’s hopefully my future profession, that’s heartening to recognize.

Anyways, sorry this blog was a day late. Having yesterday off school really threw my internal schedule. Also, it’s SNOWING! SNOW! FINALLY! See you Friday… I have snowflakes to gaze at over a mug of hot cocoa and a new Burn Notice episode to watch.