Friday, July 31, 2009

On Angst and Truth

I recently confessed to Isaac* that I wrote some angsty fiction in high school.  While he laughed (with an appropriate degree of loving mockery), I came to realize that beneath most angst there is truth.

Certainly my angsty writing (this one example is humiliating enough) got at a deeper truth, something that I felt wasn't known in the world at large.  You know how, in high school, your closeness with your friends is such that their problems become your problems, too?  This was a case of learning something from my friends with initial shock, but then wanting to spread the knowledge once the shock faded away.

And realizing that my writing of angsty fiction was coupled with my desire to make people understand the truth makes me feel a little bit less sheepish for writing complain-y rants like that.  But just a tiny bit.  It is, after all, angsty fiction.

At least I never wrote fanfiction.




*I know I have a bad habit of name-dropping just so I can link to my friends' websites and blogs.  I still haven't yet gotten over the novelty of my friends having websites and blogs to link to, and it's fun, so cut me some slack, okay?

7 comments:

  1. I wrote fanfiction.

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  2. Oh, Kevin. :)

    For what shows / books / etc?

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  3. Just some Lord of the Rings fiction -- not using any major characters, though. Is that still fan fiction? In any case, it was pretty lame.

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. I think you're dead on.
    Most of the angsty, teenage stuff that we all wrote in highschool comes from having some experience or learning something that blew our minds, then wanting to tell the world about it.
    The thing that makes it so laughable in retrospect is that we thought the world didn't know.

    I am "on the record" as writing fanfiction for a while in middle-school. Perhaps even early highschool? I can't remember. In any case, I never reused characters. And it definitely wasn't self-insertion fanfic, which is the worst.

    -L

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  6. hehHA! I am proud to say that self-insertion fanfiction never occurred to me. Wow. Just wow.

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  7. I suppose that means you've also dodged LARPing, Kevin? There's another one I narrowly avoided.

    Luke - what kind of fanfics did you write? You cleverly concealed them from me (though you did hear the pinnacle of my angst).

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