"Welcome to the O.C., bitch" are perhaps the finest words ever spoken on television
I've just come across some "The O.C." fanfic I wrote in the summer of 2003. It's two completed stories, one work in progress, and one with only a few paragraphs finished. They're not bad -- three of them focus on what if Jimmy Cooper was Seth's biological father instead of Sandy -- but they're teenage angsty enough for me not to want to post embarrassing excerpts here.
I was a very melodramatic child, which probably explains my love of L.M. Montgomery's Rilla of Ingleside (the eighth book in the Anne of Green Gables series), as it's set against World War I. Walter dies y'all! I'm still not over that. And don't get me started on the Sweet Valley High books. For Christmas in fourth or fifth grade, I got a few of them, including one that focused on Liz and Todd's relationship, and one on Liz and Jeffery's. Well, obviously Todd and Jeffery were rivals, and so while I was giddily reading the Liz and Todd book on Christmas Day, I shoved the Liz and Jeffery book under my pillow so as to spare Todd and Jeffery the sight of each other. In the process, I bent the cover a little bit, but I didn't even care because I'd just spared two fictional characters some emotional pain.
Anyway, I wrote that "O.C." fic while working as a pool attendant at a condo. No lifeguarding stuff, just rule enforcing and pool cleaning. It paid $10 an hour, which is really great money to make for sitting around doing nothing 75 percent of the time, but I'm one of those idiots who hates sitting around doing nothing while getting paid for it. (I would have felt less guilty about it if I hadn't had three bosses who told me three different things, so I always felt like I had to look busy.)
Well, you can only skim the pool and wash down the tables and chairs so many times before your brain dribbles out your ear, so I decided to write some fic for this great new show I'd fallen in love with that summer. Hence, my taste for the dramatic got the best of me, and I wrote some depression-filled stories. I made Sandy cry, guys. These were definitely some Serious and Heavy Stories.
But even though the stories tipped into "how teenage girls want teenage boys to act instead of how teenage boys actually act" territory, they were still better than the second season of "The O.C." That was the last I watched of it -- maybe six or seven episodes of season two, then never again, not even the series finale. Josh Schwartz, you better not mess up "Chuck." And call me if you want plot ideas for the "Chuck's mom abandoned the family" thing. I'm sure I could come up with something appropriately touching. (Dear God, you just know they're going to make the mom one of the bad guys Chuck encounters, don't you. Oy.)
Apologies if you don't watch any of the above shows, or have read any of the books. Although, seriously, if you haven't read at least one SVH book, then you haven't lived.
And goodness, the TV show! I have a handful of episodes still on tape (I removed that little plastic bit on the VHS so you couldn't tape over them), and it is basically a national treasure and an introduction to the Daniel twins -- all the more better when Brittany "Jessica Wakefield" Daniel showed up playing The Tranny on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." She went from playing a character constantly described in the books as having silk-spun blonde hair, aquamarine eyes, and a perfect size-six figure to being a male-to-female pre-op transvestite who dates one of the main (male) characters, with whom she's worked out a system for taping back her penis while they fool around. (That show's another national treasure.)
OK, gonna stop rambin' fer reals now.
I was a very melodramatic child, which probably explains my love of L.M. Montgomery's Rilla of Ingleside (the eighth book in the Anne of Green Gables series), as it's set against World War I. Walter dies y'all! I'm still not over that. And don't get me started on the Sweet Valley High books. For Christmas in fourth or fifth grade, I got a few of them, including one that focused on Liz and Todd's relationship, and one on Liz and Jeffery's. Well, obviously Todd and Jeffery were rivals, and so while I was giddily reading the Liz and Todd book on Christmas Day, I shoved the Liz and Jeffery book under my pillow so as to spare Todd and Jeffery the sight of each other. In the process, I bent the cover a little bit, but I didn't even care because I'd just spared two fictional characters some emotional pain.
Anyway, I wrote that "O.C." fic while working as a pool attendant at a condo. No lifeguarding stuff, just rule enforcing and pool cleaning. It paid $10 an hour, which is really great money to make for sitting around doing nothing 75 percent of the time, but I'm one of those idiots who hates sitting around doing nothing while getting paid for it. (I would have felt less guilty about it if I hadn't had three bosses who told me three different things, so I always felt like I had to look busy.)
Well, you can only skim the pool and wash down the tables and chairs so many times before your brain dribbles out your ear, so I decided to write some fic for this great new show I'd fallen in love with that summer. Hence, my taste for the dramatic got the best of me, and I wrote some depression-filled stories. I made Sandy cry, guys. These were definitely some Serious and Heavy Stories.
But even though the stories tipped into "how teenage girls want teenage boys to act instead of how teenage boys actually act" territory, they were still better than the second season of "The O.C." That was the last I watched of it -- maybe six or seven episodes of season two, then never again, not even the series finale. Josh Schwartz, you better not mess up "Chuck." And call me if you want plot ideas for the "Chuck's mom abandoned the family" thing. I'm sure I could come up with something appropriately touching. (Dear God, you just know they're going to make the mom one of the bad guys Chuck encounters, don't you. Oy.)
Apologies if you don't watch any of the above shows, or have read any of the books. Although, seriously, if you haven't read at least one SVH book, then you haven't lived.
And goodness, the TV show! I have a handful of episodes still on tape (I removed that little plastic bit on the VHS so you couldn't tape over them), and it is basically a national treasure and an introduction to the Daniel twins -- all the more better when Brittany "Jessica Wakefield" Daniel showed up playing The Tranny on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." She went from playing a character constantly described in the books as having silk-spun blonde hair, aquamarine eyes, and a perfect size-six figure to being a male-to-female pre-op transvestite who dates one of the main (male) characters, with whom she's worked out a system for taping back her penis while they fool around. (That show's another national treasure.)
OK, gonna stop rambin' fer reals now.