Wattpad Rants

21. I'm Sixteen!

"'Hi! I'm Marla, sixteen, brunette, white skin, and blue orbs—I know, super ugly. That's my boyfriend, Kyl-I mean... Tyle-r—Tyler. He's the hottest guy in school, seventeen, perfect dark-as-night hair which is also messy somehow, slightly tanned skin, and stormy grey orbs... uh, Coffee, are you alright?'

Currently hyperventilating, 'What? Me? I-I'm fine... I'm totally fine...'"

The fact that I was only riffing on one thing, but ended up deciding to make the most cliche paragraph in existence. Holy macaroni, I'm actually crying.

Um, so, we're talking about ages today!... I'm gonna go get a tissue.

~•~

Okay, I'm back! Completely rejuvenated and hopefully in a good enough mindset to stare at the unholy example I made... alright, it still burns my orbs but I think I'll survive.

So, why is literally every main character on this site either sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen? Like, I get all of the "YoU hAve BeEn cHOseN WoOo" stuff, but can't the prophecy be a little later? I have yet to see a twenty-third birthday prophecy... maybe the lucky first writer of one could be you!

Moving on, all love stories happen in either high school or college. While I absolutely wouldn't encourage you to skew any lower since no one is in the mood to imagine twelve-year-olds making out, why is it just these years of your characters' lives? Realistically, people who don't meet in school would be a bit older before actually deciding to get into a relationship. No late twenty's or early thirty's? Hey, if they are, then that means you can give them a cool job that helps skip over all of those nonexistent school scenes that show up like twice in a love story and are never spoken of again.

I don't know if I'm being nit-picky, but this site absolutely has some sort of "teenage-syndrome," and the saddest aspect of it is that half the time, these teenagers aren't even written well. There are teenagers who have family troubles, have trauma, or even resort to drugs. Why aren't there stories written about these people? People with real inner turmoil that doesn't involve a blonde stealing their popularity or a hot rich kid.

So many people have imposter syndrome in these crucial years of their life and the only thing they have to compare themselves to over here is a brown-haired, blue-eyed, skinny Mary Sue.

Sometimes it's okay for a book to be more mature—and no, I don't mean throw in random cuss words and werewolves—because if your characters are coming of age, they'll face much more nuanced questions than, "Hopefully he likes me."

~•~

449 words

"Wow, I didn't expect to reach into such profound topics, but I don't think you'll find them anywhere else so... yeah! Honestly, this is just how I feel about the topic. Questions like this even came up in middle school for me! I remember finding out about people I knew personally doing drugs and spending nights wondering what I was supposed to do. Things like these do happen, and people want to know that they aren't alone. Okay, now I'm ranting again. Please vote and comment if you found this idk useful in anyway and I'll see you next chapter!"

- Coffee