Women of Fiction I Really Shouldn't Emulate

Elaine, Lady of Shalott

     You're still only half-sick of shadows.
     Half-sick is not nearly enough to venture out of your tower (a.k.a. Fortress of Solitude, despite your never really being a fan of Superman). It is not enough to put down your brush and your pen, to cease weaving wonders of worlds of your own making.
     You're terrified of lying in your metaphorical funeral bower, unknown and unloved, while the future object of your affections goes tirra-fucking-lirra.
     Ass.

Scheherezade

     

     A hundred and one nights, and several years later, her story still fascinates you – woman using her imagination and her guile to stay her execution and win their salvation.

     Then you realize the sultan was a freaking serial killer, and the vizier's daughter a classic victim of Stockholm's Syndrome.

     There goes another one of your fantasies.

Miss Haversham

     You can easily imagine yourself stranded at the altar, the erstwhile groom a schuckster hankering for your parents' money.

     But then again, launching a decades-long scheme of revenge and bitterness seems far too involved. Besides, all that lace would drive you mad.

     Oh.

Ophelia

     Sometimes you think you are turning slowly, inexorably insane. Memories bite at you, tear at you, crash into you like that motorcycle nearly a decade ago. From all outward appearances you have no mouth, but inside, you are screaming. Screaming. SCREAMING.

     There will be a sweet freedom in madness, you think, as you run on the inside of your skull.

Buttercup

     Life is pain. Anybody who tells you different is selling something.

     It should worry you that that line is becoming your mantra.