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.

Alter-Egos/ The Words I used to write

1. Tuathanidana (Lj)

As a kid, you had a borderline obsession with all things make-believe—primarily, the gods and goddesses of ancient past, and the soap-opera madness of their lives

Because of a sugar-induced script written with friends, a stuffed toy named Fero, and crazy prepubescent hijinks, you also had a fascination with purple cows.

And then you discovered your Celtic namesake, she of the bovine emblem, flamboyant following, and virgin status.

Kismet.

2. My Spazzy Girl (Xanga)

Everyone who has watched the movie said they saw you. When your coach handed you a copy of it, you decided to take a look. Promptly, (a whiter, prettier, thinner version of) you show up on screen, drunk and demented in a subway station.

Since then, you’ve watched her every movie. Since then, you’ve cried at her every movie. Still, that first film stuck, of a lonely misfit driving people crazy.

Just as silly, you’re keenly aware you’d do just the same thing.

3. Silverfoil (Tastyword)

At the height of your delusions, you imagined yourself winning competitions, getting plaudits from people worldwide. But even as you imagined that Olympic medal, your fantasies were satisfied with second place.

You also started a private, utterly secret account, wanting to be known for your rapier wit and brilliant insights into love, and life, and beyond, rather than open only to the usual family and friend.

The blog didn’t last long.

Neither did your dreams.

4. Summer Fling (Blogdrive)

There are movies wherein a girl goes on vacation, falls deeply in love in some exotic locale with some exotic local (preferably rich, tall, dark and handsome), and the local reciprocates in kind.

Alas, that has never happened to you.

But hope springs eternal.

5. Drabble Diary (Blogger)

Latest, greatest, most pretentious.

Searching for Ever After (or, why Disney has ruined my life)

Sleeping Beauty

There is one blinding instant of pain, so unlike the prick of a needle, which then dulls, bit by bit, to a pale shade of agony. The wound never shows through your skin, and so no one ever kisses it to make it better.

And so instead, the morning comes. The world itself is an endless dream, and the thorns are covering you, bit by bit.

The voice begs you to wake up.

Cinderella

It’s a frequent daydream, that masked ball. All conversation stops, and their eyes as one rest upon you. A path is made, and he walks toward you; you feel the heat of his hands through the silk. In perfect silence, you dance.

But the scene changes, to just you and him, and as the clock strikes thirteen the gown vanishes, leaves you as you are, in jeans and a wrinkled blouse and with panicked, forlorn eyes. The world falls down, and eternity shines in his hand. Then he pulls you into a silent, perfect dance.

Long live the Labyrinth.

Snow White

Growing up a kid with a paler complexion than most, it’s no wonder they started calling you that nickname. It did strange things to your sense of beauty, especially when you found out that one incarnation had a sister.

Princess fair, white as a sheet, flight over fight, passive and menial, blood and lips, sleep and death.

You would have preferred to be Rose Red.

Beauty and the Beast

Upon seeing a picture, your mind goes several ways.

You can rail at the blatant typecasting (the ignorant villager as the villain) and bemoan the evils of the bourgeoisie while sipping at your Starbucks and typing at your Mac, and this is why you can never have a boy with like passions or background.

You can sigh at the golden dress, the pretty ballroom, and plan the dream proposal, and this is why you’ll never click with a man that isn’t gay.

You can hold the supposed intellectual standard to you heart, and this is why—

OMG FURRIES.

The Little Mermaid

If you should turn to sea foam, so be it.

As long as the right person kisses the girl.

Couldn’t have said it better myself

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate (Dante)
You are just itching to use this line.
You imagine, perhaps, a dark, dank cave, or maybe a seemingly innocuous door. And then a slight turn to your fellow spelunkers, or fellow lawyer-hopefuls, and that muttered, ominous phrase.
Most will ignore you, some will roll their eyes, and maybe one or two kindred souls will recognize your wit and reply in kind.
Your sister laughs when you voice this wish, and calls you pretentious.
You can’t help agreeing.

Come to my woman’s breasts, and unsex me here! (Shakespeare)
Once, you were shoved into your friend’s ample bosom for a class recitation.
It is not an experience you care to repeat.

O pagsintang labis ng kapangyarihan, sampung mag-ama’y iyong nasasaklaw! (Balagtas)
Of the four national texts you were mandated to study, you can only remember one stanza of the second.
(Because the one with the bird features a hero that gets it on with three sisters, the one with your name has absolutely no likeable heroine, and the sequel gets the rest killed).
It’s ironic that’s the stanza you remember; the idea of anyone shouting about “the power of love” makes your hackles raise.

I know ever so many people, and until one of them dies, I couldn’t possibly be friends with anyone else. (Charades)
You’re not the type to utter flirtatious rejoinders to straight, attractive men (the non-threatening homosexuals, though, you’re free to tease). Despite all outward appearances, you’re still that shy overweight girl who thought Prince Charmings were real, and is afraid of them morphing into misogynistic bastards.
But your stories and writings are littered with characters who whisper sweet nothings to each other under the guise of urbane wordplay.
Maybe when you’re older, and away, you can slip on a little black dress and slip into a dark crowded bar, sip on some bubbly and raise your eyes to a beautiful stranger.

Though we cannot make our sun stand still, we can yet make him run. (Marvell)
Your soul cries for adventure, for wide, open spaces. For your life to be something more than a circumscribed path to mediocrity.
And so, you do things, from time to time. Silly things. Stupid things. Once-in-a-lifetime, wow-you’re-insane, dear-lord-you’re-amazing things. Anything to alleviate the mundane.
You sometimes think, if your reckless immolation results in the utter ruin of what makes you you, you think it worth the sacrifice.

Twilight: A Review

(A post rather, rather tardy.)

Poster
His pale, lives-in-a-basement skin. His sinister leer, topped with sanguine lips. Her frightened, deer-in-headlights eyes. their unnatural postures.
Your first impression upon seeing the giant billboard is that it is a PSA on child predators. It does not bode well for giggling prepubescents the world over.

Baseball
So far, your quiet quips and your friend’s heckling has gone unnoticed in the hushed, reverent crowd. The giggling of the schoolboys beside you makes your skin crawl, but you refrain from reaching over and socking them with your soda can. You keep mostly to yourself.
Then they bring out the baseballs, and a familiar song oozes out of the movie speakers.
Your scream of indignation echoes in the moviehouse.

Alphabet
The two protagonists—appropriately cardboard and/or smarmy beyond belief—attempt to talk, or what passes for it. You watch in puzzlement as their conversation, composed of hackneyed phrases and hard-sell flirtations, go from Point A to point W and back again to Point J.
“I’m dangerous.”
Seriously. Who talks like that?

Blood
Enter the lamb, see the pussycat.
That first meeting, as the supposed hero (or rather, two-century-something who routinely stalks delicious-smelling girls in their bedrooms) flairs his nostrils and tries his hardest not to prevent an orgasm in the classroom (you call ‘em as you see ‘em), you have a stray thought about menstruation.
Suddenly the direction of your mind takes a turn for the gutter.

Credits
It is the best part of the movie.
The cinematography is wholly different, and the music coolly seductive. No acting is required, therefore the actors posing like 50’s Hollywood stars actually look the part.
It is the best part, however, because it is over.

Clichés

I skulk in coffeeshops in vain.

Long walks on the beach

It’s ironic, that despite living in a tropical country, you can’t stand the turf n’ surf.

You look awful in a bathing suit. You always get sunburns on your skin. Sand—and crabs, and bits of broken glass, and polluted flotsam from the sea—stick to your toes. The sandcastles you build always get washed away, in an apt parallelism to dreams and wishes and plans you’ve made.

But when it’s quiet, and the moon sits atop the velvet black like a queen, as you watch the dark waves roll softly…

…Alone, you are content.

Crying in the rain

It’s kind of unfair that when fictional heroines do it, they do it prettily—eyes glimmering with leashed fire, clothing pressed damply to ample curves, skin lustrous because of a strategically placed streetlamp.

You blotch. The moment tears come, a sniffle is sure to follow, and before you know it, you have a full-fledged cold, and maybe, just maybe, an asthma attack.

(Breathe.)

And come to think of it, the rain is probably polluted as well.

Well, damn.

Wedding bells

At this age, Mother says, in another culture, you would have been married already!

You have a moment to think, “Holy cow, we’re allowed to date?” while your sister mouths to you, “Mrs. Bennet?”

So as your mother continues on her diatribe on suitors, the lack thereof, and her three older children’s apparent ineptitude with the other sex—

(She still doesn’t know about the stalkers you’ve had, not in detail, at least)

—you spend the rest of dinner daydreaming about wedding bells, and a possible Darcy.

Guys next door

You hate your village.

When you had to do a survey last year, it took two days (and it rained the entire first morning) before you could finally get enough answers. The only silver lining in that expedition was the two cute men living two blocks away from you.

Alas, it is not that kind of community where bake sales and basketball games let boys meet girls…or maybe it is. You, after all, are the hermit.

But who can blame you? Next-doors were your cousins, and a colonel who spent midnights cursing loudly into the phone.

Not a good combination.

Star-crossed lovers

Romeo and Juliet were idiots. It squicks you to realize Juliet was 13 (Dear God, eight years older, and STILL alone), and Romeo was a filthy little boy (glove upon your hand, indeed).

Tristan and Isolde are forever ruined because of James Franco, and while you adore Hades and Persephone—the Goth shtick works, to a certain degree—you have to wonder about her mother’s hold on her. Unnatural.

Cupid and Psyche. Too classic. Beren and Lúthien. Too eternal. Buffy and Angel. Too dead.

By the time you’ve ran out of pairs to emulate, you hope you’ve met you other, unrequited half soon.