Star-crossed lovers

[mariko_writing]

It sucks in real life, but my goodness it's appealing in literature.

Right now I'm trying to think of a good reason why my teenaged characters can absolutely, point-blank, not end up together, or even get together at all, despite however much I would want to write it otherwise.  I'm talking way beyond something along the lines of "one of them

Comments

[zevieblack]

How about sexual preference? Or perceived sexual preference anyway, and that's always a hugely debatable "fiction of society" issue. It always seems to be my go-to "cause" lol, but honestly it's one of the Big Issues of our generation. Yuck, please excuse all the ironic and pretentious punctuation and capitalization here lol.

Or race, a la Snow Falling on Cedars? Of course, you and me both stand in living proof against that, but our parents ain't everyone lol. Or religion ... omg, the fallouts I've seen between couples because of religious affiliation. Not different religions but religious versus not religious?

I shouldn't give you ideas lol ... you'll figure it out better yourself. Are you going to let us read any of this when you write it? Star-crossed lovers now ... it's getting more and more appealing. ;)

[mariko_writing]

Of course I'll let y'all read it! I just need to, um ... write anything first because right now it's just a bunch of vague ideas scribbled down on some yellow legal pads.

You know, my first instinct was to make one of the characters gay. I don't know how well that would work though, since one is a boy and one is a girl and best friends and it would just make sense for them to get together (if only as a ruse, or both of them trying to convince themselves that they have a "normal" relationship). I suppose I just don't have the experience of trying to make myself romantically love someone I'm not sexually attracted to, though the idea of trying to make oneself love is hardly specific to one group of people....

Both the characters are white (in the sense that any given stranger would ascribe whiteness to them). Maybe religion, although both are completely apathetic about religion (perhaps nominally Christian) ... gah. That's my problem with creating characters before getting a plot together!

[hanfastolfe]

I agree that it's a bit cliche-ish to make one of them gay but it could stand in amusing counterpoint to all the people who write fics in which the guy has a token 'fag hag' who's perfectly happy with the situation and blah blah. How about all the times in which a gay guy has had a girl interested in him and it wrecked the friendship when she had to deal with the situation and couldn't handle it?

[zevieblack]

I was thinking that it would be one of those anomalies where both parties are in love with each other - nothing forced, nothing pretend - but it is doomed because of mismatched genitalia. (Maybe even like Bad Boy lol - AJ sooo would have gotten with Tully if he'd been a she.) But then you have to want to make that point about sexuality and love either being different or inextricably tied or blah, blah, blah ... The thing with an uncontrollable thing that separates them is that the story is probably going to be about that issue - religion, sexuality, whatever.

Sooooo ... I guess that means, what is your story about? lol sorry, Mariko, your LJ is just providing too much food for thought ... or babbling lol.

[mariko_writing]

Food for thought! Definitely food for thought! It is grist for my mill! I'm starting and restarting responses to your comments because they make me think about what I really want to be going on in my story