Feel like I'm living aTeenage Dream

[bsg_aussiegirl]

Today, just a quick discussion post based on the classic fic by Dallas, The Carnival GirlI must admit, even though I’ve written young!Laura, I had trouble picturing 16 and 19 year old Laura and Bill

Comments

[vash26]

What I always find strange about fics where the characters are 16 years old is that their dates are 'grown up dates'. Okay, if it involves an older boyfriend there could be some logic to it. When I was sixteen I never been taken to a restaurant by my boyfriend. We would meet in a bar, I'd come in with my friends, he'd come in with his friends. We'd occasionaly go to the movies and his mom would drive us etc. In fics the dates of teenagers always don't seem very realistic to me.

Doing something romantic like a picnic would probably have horrified my at that age, we would probably mix a bottle of bacardi in a cola bottle an have a bag of potato chips, but there would not be a basket involved at that age.

I don't really remember the picnic from this fic, it's a long time ago that I've read it so maybe this was the exception, but usually the typical fictional picnic doesn't match my reality.

[bsg_aussiegirl]

My first real date, we went ten pin bowling. *snort* It was usually that or rollerskating. :)

[vash26]

Don't get me wrong, I think Bill and Laura deserve the perfect date, and I don't mind at all that their dates don't resemble any of the crappy dates I've been on in my life. I just don't see them doing those things at that age.

Pin bowling sounds so romantic *happy sigh*

In the Netherlands you don't drive until your eighteen years old. There's nothing that kills the romance more than your mom picking you up!

[bsg_aussiegirl]

You just made me reflect! My first real date I was 16 and I went out with a 23 year old. (Yes, he took me bowling -- wtf?) Obviously I've had an old man fetish for quite some time!!!!! LOL It didn't last long though. *snort* I think we had 2 other dates. One to KFC (you have KFC? not really the romantic restaurant!) and once to a nightclub (they rarely checked for ID in those days!).

OMG, I need to stop thinking about this... He was such an awful kisser... *snort*

[northeto]

For me it is difficult to picture them so young because by the time we really get to know them massive and catastrophic life-changing events have already occurred. Even when we find out about their lives pre-Cylon attacks, we learn that they both experienced horrible painful losses earlier in life. They are so far from being teenagers, in terms of age and in terms of life experience, that I don't think I can really have a sense of what they were like at that young age.

I am also confused by the fact that Laura seemed to be kind of off put by the supposed "date number 3", yet they apparently went along with it? Maybe it was explained in the part I skipped over.

I'm not crazy about Law or Red as a nickname. I might better accept a nickname that has nothing to do with her actual name or appearance, but then again I might not. I think I would only accept "Laurie" if the fic was about Laura as no older than a ten year old.

[bsg_aussiegirl]

There were a few things that never made sense about the fic. I was trying to not be too critical. She did say it was her fic. Lords knows I could pick my first fics apart. *shudder* I think the major problem was their ages. They really couldn't be the Bill and Laura we know, as you say, without some life experience. I think perhaps the author even realised this herself and that's why the fic ended so abruptly.

I hate the nicknames thing. I think because Laura is her nickname in a sense. She's Madam President or Madam Secretary and when Bill calls her Laura it's a step towards intimacy.

[mellow_mel]

I reread up to the picnic. I didn't remember how corny it was! Lol
I remember kind of liking the unfinished sequel...

Maybe the whole thing would have felt better with Laura being 18 ish and bill being 24 ish...
Laura would have more of a grown up voice and alittle more angst:) and the whole thing wouldn't have seemed kind of gross (16 year old who just lost her father, dating a 19 yr old seems wrong!)

[bsg_aussiegirl]

I never got to the sequel. It was difficult to work out why 16 year old Laura was attracted to 19 year old Bill. There's a lot of descriptions about beautiful witty sad Laura but Bill's characterisation was, unfortunately, absent.

[afrakaday]

My problem with the fic is a little different. Canon Laura is too classy to have grown up a carnie! [Especially if this teenage tryst resulted in Laura having a baby at 16, as revealed by the sequel. I just can't reconcile an orphaned, teenage mother, traveling carnie Laura with the Secretary of Education the sequel has her become

[bsg_aussiegirl]

You have carny-ism? *snort* Although Laura being a class act doesn't stop people from writing her in some other totally unbelievable pre-attack situations (usually involving various sex partners!). I think her being a carny would be rather innocent! mmm...perhaps I should give the sequel a go. Saul and Ellen with a straightlaced child is kinda funny. These kids are Bill's? Just the first one? None?

Although, as I want to write my babyfic one day, I should perhaps avoid it.

[afrakaday]

I do have a touch of carnyism, yeah. But not crownyism. Crownies are cool!

Laura's eldest is Bill's, but of course Starbuck is the first to figure it out. Heh.

How have you not written a babyfic yet? *is puzzled*

[bsg_aussiegirl]

How have you not written a babyfic yet? *is puzzled* So many fics, so little time.