like the love bug.

As I was writing it, I assumed that the relationship WAS over after this conversation. She can’t just go storming off or anything, though, because, seriously, it’s a parking lot and it’s cold and she has to get home somehow. I don’t think she’d ever want to stay around after an outburst like that, but at the same time I think she was a bit too stunned (and hurt) to really mount much of a defensive.

Writing the story from the girl’s perspective is a really interesting idea but I’m not sure that I’m capable of writing female characters that are anything more than mysterious targets of longing affection or nameless voids that male characters simply play off of. I’ve only ever known a few women REALLY well, so I’m not sure how confident I feel trying to get inside the head of a female character. I don’t know if it’ll come off as believable.

Maybe, though.

I don’t really feel like weighing in on the “The guy could/couldn’t be more of a jerk” discussion but for some reason I am. And here’s what I’ve found. Yeah, the guy’s quite the jerk and he was way harsher than he needed to be. But at the same time, it’s good that he said something. Saying something is doing something. Their relationship has changed and there will be something changing over the next while.

Just because the situation hasn’t changed by the end of the story, doesn’t mean that it won’t eventually. That world goes on long after we stop tuning into it and everything’s always changing. His harsh words can’t not change things eventually.

Saying something didn’t make him the jerk. It was the self=centeredness of his words that made him a jerk. He made no follow-up effort at all. At that moment, it was all about him and his outburst. Breaking down happens, sure, everyone’s entitled to it. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that NOT saying anything would have been BETTER. I’m actually saying that saying NOTHING is just as bad as what this guy did. Does that make sense?

I hope you can see that the vocalization of the issues he’s got doesn’t necessarily make things better. It led to the point where the next step was to work on things, whether by working together or just getting out of it all together, like you said, but neither of them make a move towards either of those ends. And that’s where the thought that this girl is spineless comes in. She doesn’t make a move — she doesn’t even snap back at the guy (which, in itself, isn’t really the most intelligent thing to do, either, but whatever).

I know you didn’t plan on her being spineless, but how can I call someone who doesn’t even talk BACK a person with backbone? I mean, forget even just defending herself, because, who knows, she might not even have much of a case to defend herself with, but a person with self-worth would have said something. That’s why I said she was spineless. There’s just not enough coming from her to be able to make a judgement to the contrary.

If you didn’t intend for your girl to be spineless, maybe you should write her a rebuttal. I have some ideas as to how she can chime in with a response, but I’d like to hear what you’d do with her in that situation. If you’re content to leave her the way she was at the end of the story, where she was just crying to herself in the car with that guy, then she really is a spineless character.

I think the thing that makes me not completely hate the guy character in this particular piece is that he DOES recognize a problem. He’s not deluding himself, that’s for sure. He’s honest to himself, and that’s what you guys have also picked up on. But I react so violently to his actions for the reason that, OK, he’s got the ability to see that things are going wrong, but what does he do about it? Nothing, essentially. It doesn’t matter that he told her off because, as I said earlier, that doesn’t fix things. You gotta DO something if you want to fix things. It is not enough just to vent.

I ramble when I’m bored — did you notice that?

The genesis behind this story was essentially that I really wanted to write a rant. I think, however, it came out as more than that, in that both the guy and the girl in the story are really interesting characters. As the writer, I wonder how exactly you got the idea that the girl is spineless? She does, after all, only have three or four lines in the whole thing, and I never really intended her to be a spineless character.

But then, I never intended for the guy to be a jerk, either, and that seems to be the case. I’m not sure, though. AS much as his outburst is inappropriate and mean-spirited, I still sort of like him because, in the end, it’s just this raw all-out burst of honesty. I think we all have moments where we just come to realize that what we’ve doing for years is stupid, wrong and hurtful, whether it’s “I hate my job” or “I hate my apartment” or “I hate my girlfriend.” Moments where we come to see that we just have to get out NOW.

He’s totally long-winded and a bit pretentious, though. It’s similar to Blockbuster Girl, sort of.

On a tangent now: I know the girl is pretty spineless, but I’m thinking it would be interesting to see how someone would write her response to all of that. Just by going off this article, it’s plain to see that this girl has very little in the way of self-confidence, and her conception of self-worth is non-existent, but with the guy not being very conducive to actually progressing in the situation, it almost feels like it’s her turn to speak.

With that said, what would you have her response be? This is an open question, to anyone who wants to field it.