Hi Rachel,
In some of my writing I’m beginning to notice more and more that certain characters (not all) remind me of myself lol. And I hate it, I go back and rewrite them. But I’m interested if you relate to any of your characters as well so—Out of the characters you’ve written (Lonan, Reeve, Harrison, etc..) who do you think is the most like you? And what’s your take on writers seeing themselves in some of their characters?
feel about seeing reflections
Hahaha I used to HATE writing characters that were like me, and it took a while to realize that actually, they ALL are me in some iteration. To answer your question about writers seeing themselves in their characters—if writing characters that are “self-inserts” makes you joyful, DO IT!!! If writing characters who aren’t self-inserts but have attributes to you makes you joyful, DO IT! Or if you’re not into it—that’s fine too! Life is too short! Have fun with what works for you!
My experience below, this gets kind of intense as a warning! CW: suicidal ideation, disocciation
Aligning myself with my characters has been an intensely life-saving experience. I’m not sure I’d be here if it were not for Lonan… 16-year-old Rachel WAS him, and also needed him because literally nobody else “understood” where I was at except for him (undiagnosed autism for BOTH OF US??).
There was a time of my life where I couldn’t emotionally regulate at all, and in moments of stress, would often dissociate and quite literally converse with this man (looking back now, this was just a coping mechanism—confirmed by my doctor btw!—but for a couple years he was a genuine part of my psyche, like moved out of just character territory). I think I talked about this years ago, but I have a really distinct memory of disconnecting so much I quite literally thought he was THERE next to me, which I needed—he really became an externalization of the things I couldn’t deal with (or didn’t understand how to deal with). I needed to see myself reflected in the eye of someone else and for a really long time that was Lonan for me. Actually screaming crying that’s so cute.
And Lonan is similar to me in a lot of ways! This is a side tangent but when I was first diagnosed as autistic it made me wonder if I’d inadvertently written any autistic characters & it struck me way back then that the person most similar to me (Lonan lol) is probably also autistic. I was like—sensory issues?? No emotional regulation?? Speaks a bit oddly?? We are THE SAME. Haven’t really confirmed this in canon lol but I’ve been thinking about it since 2021.
Funnily, now that I have that diagnosis, my life is a lot more stable so like… I’m not currently the most like Lonan lol. But me at 16-19??? Absolutely him.
Unfortunately, I am currently HARRISON, which isn’t ideal but just like he’s a 21-year-old experiencing horrors I’m a 21-year-old experiencing horrors (which is why BB is sometimes painful to write cuz I’m like oooooh I’m feeling this… too much). To be fair, I’ve always said I’m the introverted version of Harrison (because I am lol our personality types are the same, not that I believe in those but since I was like 13 I’ve said this). But just like Lonan, Harrison has helped me now process some tough things this year that I’m not sure how else I would’ve survived. It’s important to me that I have fictional vessels to explore my own life with because it can help me identify problems & then learn to empathize with myself by empathizing with a character first.
Of course they’re also separate from me—they absolutely didn’t start as ME but as time goes on I start seeing myself in them particularly (Reeve sometimes too—our kindred spirits with processing toxic relationships <3). Maybe it’s because I am autistic, but I find it useful to understand my experiences via someone else. I love seeing the ways we can inform each other.
My TL;DR is I’m Harrison if he was Lonan so I guess I’m BB Harrison. Love this for me so much. But also add autism. Which is probably already there because: Lonan. LMAO and a dash of Reeve’s compartmentalization skills. And we have me!
7 notes
·
View notes
the body is such a strange and vapid creature. i am eating soup with noodles that i cooked in a microwave. i don't know how microwaves work, only that most of my meals come from her yellow mouth. i put mine on the fridge; i have to stand on tip toes to take the bowl out, balancing it on fingertips.
i have to eat soup because i'm coughing up blood.
when you have been raised wrong, conditions of alarm are offset. which is to say that three weeks ago, i had a panic attack because i thought i saw him the liquor store. i collapsed into a heap, ready to sob into multicolored gin bottles. it was just someone who looked a lot like him, working a shitty 9-5. the poor man. what must it be like, to have someone go pale at your profile.
i spoke too loudly during a zoom meeting, and nobody answered immediately. the shame of that scoured my entire ribcage clean. i hated the experience so much i wrote it down in my notes: a reminder not to be so fucking annoying!
but the conditions of alarm are met at the moment. i am well-and-truly ill, the blood in my hand and on the pavement. at this moment in dr. house episodes i would be swaying, and then i'd collapse delicately and awaken in a crisp hospital bed. instead my dog bites my hand in excitement. now there is blood on his muzzle.
i am diabolically, almost robotically calm about it. i laugh about it, actually. i am feeling positively waifish. i am one nightgown away from holding an oil lamp up and saying milord? are thee turnin' in for the night? new blood is pinkish, almost feminine in her brightness, a tease into the tissue.
i haven't ever cried at a funeral. i didn't know you were actually allowed to. it felt like new blood - a way of making it about me, when my job is to flatter the shadows and stay tucked out of the way. i am always doing something for someone else. i am always earning my keep. i am always loveable, because i will do what it takes to make you able to love me.
here are the personal things i have been worried about in the last three weeks: if the spider i put outside was now able to restart her life. if an hour and a half every day is enough walking for a greyhound. if i drink too much coffee. if all my friends secretly hate me. if i'm a bad friend and i should be sad about it. what happens after this next goalpost? what if i'm deeply and inherently boring?
i cough up blood. my mouth tastes like iron gummies. i am not worried about this. my body is a seahorse. my body is an ocean wave. i can detach from it, be outside of it - just float away.
2K notes
·
View notes
loveable || jenni hermoso x reader ||
you overhear jenni and think she isn't interested in you.
there was something going on between you and jenni. everybody could see it except for the two of you. the two of you had a tendency of getting very flirty, something that had annoyed your barcelona teammates to no end. alexia and the others had been hopeful that maybe with jenni's move to mexico things would change a bit, but it only seemed to get worse.
if jenni had been bad before, the distance only made her worse. she was clingier than normal, going from flirtatious little touches to literally hanging off of you sometimes. there was rarely a moment whenever the two of you were near each other that she didn't have you tucked under her arms or was carrying you around on your back.
to alexia, it was sickening, which was why she had to say something. both you and jenni deserved to be happy in her mind, and maybe if the two of you just fucked, she wouldn't have to witness all the constant flirting. that was her intention when she approached jenni about you.
"okay, enough, it has to stop," alexia said as she shoved jenni into a room. she pushed the door behind her, but didn't check to make sure that it actually shut.
"what has to stop? i'm not doing anything," jenni huffed. alexia crossed her arms over her chest, unimpressed with jenni seemingly playing dumb. "stop looking at me like that."
"what's going on with you and (y/n)?" alexia asked. jenni shrugged as she leaned against the wall. that answer definitely wasn't good enough for alexia, who moved in towards jenni with the intention of intimidating her. jenni wasn't scared of alexia, however, and she never had been. jenni pushed up from the wall and squared up to alexia, knowing the younger woman would back down. "just ask her out."
"i'm in mexico now, and i'm not just going to come running back to spain, so it won't work. the distance will be too much, and she can't handle that. she's too young, alexia," jenni snapped. alexia was surprised to see her get to anger so quickly. there was obviously more going on than what jenni let on, so alexia pulled her over to sit down and really talk to her.
…
you hadn't meant to overhear alexia and jenni. the eavesdropping technically was done on purpose, but when your name was brought up, you were curious. jenni seemed to flirt with you a lot, even more than she did with everybody else. it was getting to the point where pina and patri were relentlessly teasing you at every chance they got. you had been looking for jenni to ask her out, both of them not having let up on the pestering since you got the call to come to national camp.
"what's wrong?" pina asked as she watched you stomp past them. you didn't stop to even look at them as you went straight up to your room. pina could tell that something was really wrong, so she pulled patri and ona away to talk to you. "(y/n)!"
"just leave me alone, please. i don't want to talk to you guys right now," you told them. that would have been enough for pina to leave you alone, but patri never really knew when to quit. if anything, your words had only made it more important in her mind to talk to you.
"did something happen little one?" patri asked as she pressed a kiss to your temple. you crumpled in her arms, unable to stop the tears from falling. it felt like forever before you were calm enough to tell her what happened with jenni. patri was quick to anger, as was pina. if it wasn't for ona, the two would have stormed off before you were even finished telling them what had happened.
"i'll kill her," pina hissed through grit teeth. ona rubbed the woman's back, hoping that it would soothe her anger a bit. "how dare she say that about (y/n). i'll kill her ona, i will."
"getting angry right now won't help. i am sure that jenni did not mean it like that. come on, we've all seen the way jenni looks at (y/n) when she's not paying attention," ona whispered. you were fast asleep on the bed, exhausted from crying, but ona didn't want to risk waking you up.
"well, i'm going for a walk," patri announced. pina stood up with her, only to be pulled back down by ona.
"only one of you can go, just one," ona told them. patri glanced back at (y/n) on the bed and nodded towards pina. you'd want your best friend there when you woke up, and truthfully, patri didn't want to get kicked out from camp while you were still so upset.
…
"hola bonita," jenni greeted you with a smile. you ignored her as patri walked you past her. jenni frowned, too upseet about you ignoring her to even notice the death glare being sent from your friend. "hey! what's wrong?"
"just go away jenni," patri warned. she placed her hand on the older woman's chest to keep some distance between you and her. jenni didn't like that one bit and started to push forward, prepared to shove past patri to get to you. however, it was alexia's hand on the back of jenni's shirt that kept her from charging forward.
"go in the conference room," alexia ordered. jenni walked away, huffing and puffing as she did. alexia turned past patri and towards you. "(y/n), i need you to go to the conference room. jenni has something she'd like to say to you."
"i would rather not talk to jenni right now," you told her. alexia sighed, knowing exactly why. whenever pina had come knocking on her door, alexia had been taken aback by the anger and aggression coming from the younger player. a quick explanation had cleared things up, and alexia knew that she had to help fix things since she had partially been the cause of them.
"jenni, she can explain herself. you just need to let her know what you heard," alexia said. you didn't want to argue with your captain, so you politely asked patri to watch your plate for you while you went to find jenni. the conference room door was still open, jenni sitting on the table instead of any of the chairs.
"alexia says that we need to talk," you said, careful to close the door behind you. "i do not really want to talk to you though, not after what you said about me."
"i didn't sa- oh." jenni seemed to deflate as she realized what you had overheard. "i'm sorry, and i swear that i did not mean any of it."
"then why would you say it?" you asked her.
"because i was scared. i didn't want to start something with you only to never get to see you. i didn't want you to throw away the best club for your career so we could be closer because i knew that you would," jenni explained.
"you don't know that i'd move to mexico," you huffed. jenni absolutely knew that you'd follow her anywhere. you were extremely loyal, having moved from your hometown club and barcelona's rival, real madrid to barcelona at the insistence of your friends.
"you left madrid for patri. i'd hate to see the lengths you'd go for me," jenni joked. you shoved her away from you at the joke, but only because you knew that she had a point. all it would take for you to do something like that for jenni was if she asked. "hey! you're making it hard for me to apologize right now."
"some apology." this time, it was jenni's turn to shove you. the two of you got into a little shoving match until jenni ended up grabbing both of your hands. she pinned them down to your sides, leaning in just enough for you to smell her perfume. you looked over at her face to see her staring at yours, more specifically, your lips.
"i'm so sorry for what i said," jenni whispered. you bit your lip as you nodded in understanding. "i really do want you. i want to wake up next to you in the morning. i want to take you out on special dates. i want to go to sleep next to you at night. but fuck, right now i just want to kiss you."
"then do it," you told her. jenni moved forward quickly, pressing her lips to yours. you kissed her back, but only for a few seconds. jenni pouted when you backed away from her, mouth open to question what was wrong. "i can't do this if you're just gonna go back to some girl in mexico."
"i would never," jenni promised you. she pressed a kiss to each of your cheeks before she continued. "there are no other girls, and i don't think there will be. i love you, understood?"
"no you don't," you tried to argue. jenni dropped your hands and cupped your cheeks. "you don't love me jenni, you like me, there's a difference."
"i know that there is, and i love you. it's part of why i left, i thought you were with one of the little hooligans," jenni said, using alexia's nickname for your friend group.
"why would you want to love me?"
"why is it so hard to accept that you're loveable?" jenni asked you. she wanted to kiss you again and again, but this felt like a much more important talk to be having.
"i'm not special, and i know the kind of women you were with before me. it's scary jenni, and i don't think i can compare," you admitted. jenni frowned at you, unsure of what exactly she could tell you to prove you wrong. "i want you so badly that it hurts, but i don't think i deserve you."
"you deserve better than me, but if you'll have me, then i won't argue. you deserve the world, mi carina. i can't give you everything, but i will always make sure that you have my love," jenni promised you. you leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her lips, smiling into it.
"they warned me you could be corny, but i didn't know you were such a sap," you teased. jenni pinched your thigh as she stood up. you followed her back into the cafeteria with everybody else, finally feeling like you could actually eat now that you knew that jenni didn't really look down at you.
510 notes
·
View notes