10.08.2014

Creative Writing and the Like

I finish school in December. Absolutely nutters. No idea what I'm going to do. But I hope it's something to do with writing. This is my last semester of my undergrad and the first semester of creative writing I've ever taken. A bit too late, but I'm loving it. My other classes are Theater/Arts/Society, Math Decision Making Skills, and Personal Wellness. It's been a dream. In theater we rarely have class, and when we do, it's for watching plays and film. Like Pride and Prejudice. Kiera Knightly version. Swoon. Not applicable, but good. Math is drudgery, but I'm surviving. All that to say, I'm going to start posting the pieces I've been doing for class exercises. The objective of the following piece was to make a list. Here we go:

Men that you will inevitably fall in love with.

Heathcliff, in high school, while sitting in a bathtub until the water has gone cold like jello that hasn’t quite set.  His cruel streak will make you susceptible to other bad boys like Jesse from Gilmore Girls. Crooked smilers and the like.

Obi Wan Kenobi, AKA Ewan McGregor, which will confuse you during your formative years as you saw the originals where Alex Guinness is plodding around looking old and then you look at Ewan McGregor who is just so dashing and do we all turn to dust in the end?

Van Helsing, first as the gun-slinging action hero Hugh Jackman, later as the Dutch professor of Stoker’s world. Having met the first before the other, every reading of Dracula is now more than slightly provocative and sexy. The way he kicks vampire butt with his body and his mind will change you and might make you wish you were Kate Beckinsale.

Wolverine, after reading Ulitmate X-Men Volumes III-V, because when you’re twelve and comics are free in the library you go for it. Incidentally, once more you will fall for Hugh Jackman as he dashes across the screen in countless Marvel mash-ups. But you will always wish he was just a bit more like the comic. You will learn that when hair is drawn by artists it is magnetic and emotes, but when those same styles are attempted in the real world, they are flat and ludicrous.  You’ll still love Hugh Jackman and wish you had Pocahontas’ s hair.

Darcy, Fitzwilliam. You’ll wish you never stumbled across this guy because men. Just men. Also, you might think you want a love story like his and Elizabeth’s, not even considering Colin Firth, but you were just rereading Pride and Prejudice and most of it is bullshit.* It’s a lot of pain for a lot of gain. But whatever happened to being friends from the start?

*You’ll realize that you mistakenly fall for the “what appear to be charming” characters in films and books until they are unmasked, particularly where Austen is concerned. Willoughby and Wickham are just the sort for you, you think. Until you’re utterly in ruin and damn it, Heathcliff, you’ve reared your gorgeous head again.

Papa John. Taco John. Papa Murphy. Colonel Sanders. These are love affairs that will never end.

Tom Stoppard will make you fall in love Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are dead.

But Hugh Jackman? You’ll always have Hugh Jackman.

Also Ewan McGregor.