The Screaming
Jan. 29th, 2021 12:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krytellaBeing isolated at home for 10 months with just my two housemates (who also work from home so we're all just always here but not necessarily interacting much) has been... interesting.
In May I wrote the majority of a fic about a teenager/adult relationship very tightly from the teen's point of view. Something about being just at home, at home, at home, doing work like homework and not going to coffee shops or restaurants or bars just took me back. I do hope to finish that story before it goes from few people caring to zero people caring as the fandom moves on...
I started reading first wave bandom (!) fic in December and was mystified as to why I was suddenly so deeply obsessed with a long-dead fandom that I was wandering through lists of bookmarks of fics from 2007 half of which have linkrotted off the Internet with the LJ exodus and then I realized... you know what's really nice... that I was already missing because my only friendships outside fandom people I rarely really talked to were quasi-professional... was like... touching people? Cuddling platonically? My housemates are basically family members and we do hug but they're in a relationship with each other and I'm not with them and we don't have the kind of vibe where more than occasional hug when someone is feeling down. So yeah I'm trapped in a house with people I don't even necessarily talk to that much, is it surprising I want to drown in stories about being trapped in a tour bus with people with whom I have an intense creative collaboration who I can lounge all over and have it be no big deal?
At least I'm in group chats with my buddies in the union organizing world and we're shooting the shit all the time but I can't be in a room with any of them either. I'm doing that thing where I have the idea for a story and write like two scenes and then just keep turning it around in my head as it grows and grows, all these parts moving around and slotting into place, and playing out the scenes as I try to fall asleep, but not writing any of it down, and then what inevitably happens is I eventually get bored and it's never anything and that's that. Basically the inside of my brain is constant words and 99.99% of it never gets shared with anyone else, up from 99% when I could still see people socially.
Fictional characters like this are fun: fun to write but also experienced as fun by the people around them. They're weird, spontaneous, interesting, and mercurial, if maybe a little Too Much sometimes. My constant internal screaming is so self-contained I'm pretty sure it's not "fun" for anyone other than sometimes me when I amuse myself. Maybe my self-perception is off -- it certainly has been before -- but I think of myself as a pretty calm person, outwardly. The actions of people around me rarely upset me. It's like there's this one level of me that's always singing a song (we had a full hour of "I Want it That Way" today, thanks brain) and experiencing 6 emotions and 4 simultaneous thoughts but the part that actually reaches the surface is pretty flat and just trying to get through the day and do a minimum number of things that have some relation to the world outside my head.
In May I wrote the majority of a fic about a teenager/adult relationship very tightly from the teen's point of view. Something about being just at home, at home, at home, doing work like homework and not going to coffee shops or restaurants or bars just took me back. I do hope to finish that story before it goes from few people caring to zero people caring as the fandom moves on...
I started reading first wave bandom (!) fic in December and was mystified as to why I was suddenly so deeply obsessed with a long-dead fandom that I was wandering through lists of bookmarks of fics from 2007 half of which have linkrotted off the Internet with the LJ exodus and then I realized... you know what's really nice... that I was already missing because my only friendships outside fandom people I rarely really talked to were quasi-professional... was like... touching people? Cuddling platonically? My housemates are basically family members and we do hug but they're in a relationship with each other and I'm not with them and we don't have the kind of vibe where more than occasional hug when someone is feeling down. So yeah I'm trapped in a house with people I don't even necessarily talk to that much, is it surprising I want to drown in stories about being trapped in a tour bus with people with whom I have an intense creative collaboration who I can lounge all over and have it be no big deal?
At least I'm in group chats with my buddies in the union organizing world and we're shooting the shit all the time but I can't be in a room with any of them either. I'm doing that thing where I have the idea for a story and write like two scenes and then just keep turning it around in my head as it grows and grows, all these parts moving around and slotting into place, and playing out the scenes as I try to fall asleep, but not writing any of it down, and then what inevitably happens is I eventually get bored and it's never anything and that's that. Basically the inside of my brain is constant words and 99.99% of it never gets shared with anyone else, up from 99% when I could still see people socially.
Fictional characters like this are fun: fun to write but also experienced as fun by the people around them. They're weird, spontaneous, interesting, and mercurial, if maybe a little Too Much sometimes. My constant internal screaming is so self-contained I'm pretty sure it's not "fun" for anyone other than sometimes me when I amuse myself. Maybe my self-perception is off -- it certainly has been before -- but I think of myself as a pretty calm person, outwardly. The actions of people around me rarely upset me. It's like there's this one level of me that's always singing a song (we had a full hour of "I Want it That Way" today, thanks brain) and experiencing 6 emotions and 4 simultaneous thoughts but the part that actually reaches the surface is pretty flat and just trying to get through the day and do a minimum number of things that have some relation to the world outside my head.
