Lucky Girl - Completed

oh man, I like your interpretation a lot more than mine. I always find it funny who you can write something with one intention and others will find so many different meanings from it.

Agreed - when you're seventeen virginity seems like the most embarrassing thing ever because you're looking at all the people with more experience than you and wondering what's wrong with you. I learned that everyone was lying about what they'd done anyway, and I like to think that this was the case for Kelly in part one. She probably had not done the things she told her friends about.

At the beginning Kelly - and Claire to a lesser degree - would have projected their own insecurities onto poor Evie. When Kelly feels like what she's done and how far she's gone is the most important thing about her, she would see her pressure on Evie as her way of "helping" her become more worthy. I guess setting her up with a boy she thought was a bit of a loser was a way of simultaneously keeping her in her place and not allowing her to be with someone who was too good for Kelly. Hence her fury at the Jude situation, Kelly could never have scored with Jude, so how is it fair that Evie, the defective friend, can?

Regarding Jude, flat out, he was too much for her to the point that you could say he was on a completely different plane of existence. He would have destroyed her, he was just too adult and she put too much stock in him and acted like he was the love interest in some romantic movie, it's too much pressure to put on a person and she would have never viewed him as mortal. Either he would have become frustrated by her desire to move slowly with him (and her obvious immaturity in other ways) or she would have jumped into bed with him before she was ready in order to prove something to him.

True about her mother, she absolutely could have taken the health approach, but it's telling that she hit Evie where it hurts. She was embarrassed by her husbands behavior at the dinner table and took it out on her daughter instead. Mothers and daughters can often have extremely complex relationships, they may be a lot that Marian sees of herself in Evie, and is afraid of her making the same mistakes, or projecting her own self loathing onto her, it's truly a tangled mess.

Yes! This is the central theme of the story - whether she can be worthy as her own person. The pursuit of joy in a society that keeps telling you that the most important thing in life is the companionship of another person.

That has stood out to me as important, during this "act" of the story that's at college/Dublin, that there's no one person Evie is hung up on, in the same way as Jude was her focus throughout the first act. She's got art, friends, boys, parties, and complicated feelings about all of them, but no one thing is giving that single-minded purposeful shape to her life. While she's got her struggles and is floundering in some ways, maybe the struggle and the floundering will ultimately lead her in the direction of understanding and appreciating herself more fully, than she'd be able to if she were just stuck on one person or one thing.

Unless alcohol is going to become a thing that she's hung up on, in "Act 2"? Recent episodes have focused more and more on drinking...

She's been focused on other things which is really really good for her. I think without a boy in her life - we already know she's inclined to obsess over romance and shape her whole life around it - she might be more inclined to discover who she actually is. The challenge for her is to keep herself steady, and learn how to be resilient as she's leaning into alcohol as as crutch whenever she feels unsteady.

it's so cool!! And thank you for this, it really means a lot to hear it. I understand the fear, honestly. You mentioned what your degree was in our private messages on tumblr, and I never responded, but actually I did almost exactly the same degree (and now work in that field). I imagine we have the same training in story and archetypes, I did a load of Jungian stuff and studies of the enneagram test which I've found generally helpful when writing, and I totally get the desire to lean into concepts like that because they've truly worked well for forever. I think if I were writing a screenplay I'd definitely think more about those kinds of things, but writing something like a novel or a story like this one feels very different to me somehow. I also feel intense guilt when it gets a bit dark, but I have to follow the natural progression of it. Sometimes it just feels like Evie would do these things, so I let her do them even if they lead her into strange places.

oh and believe me, me too. I want to give her a good shake all the time.

Overall, I want happiness to come to Evie and for her to stop obsessing over boys (feelings can't always be controlled though…) :(. There are very few moments where she seems to pause and enjoy her life. Instead, almost every sober second seems to be filled with anxiety.

Her parents pay for everything, including her half of the utility bills, so really, nothing matters at all to her, and I know she doesn’t really understand why we have to suffer in the cold, or why I kept telling her to buy a hot water bottle instead of cranking on the radiators every time she goes to bed. If I didn’t keep remembering to switch it off our bills would be astronomical every month.

I don't understand why they have to suffer in the cold either. Evie hasn't raised any environmental issues. Her concerns seem to be entirely financial and if I were Claire, I would be annoyed with Evie about this and pay the bill so it becomes a non-issue. This doesn't need to be a point of stress for either of them. Also as working class as Evie is (and I hope she bonds with Dean over it in the future), she's also privileged and benefiting from Claire's father's wealth and Claire's father's having conveniently evicted the previous tenants. It's disgusting to consider how difficult things would be for her without her basically having her rent subsidized. She's already struggling with money. It must be so hard for working class students who only have themselves to rely on.

Evie's reaction to Dean's criticism is interesting. Based on her shyness to discuss and show others her work in the past, I would have thought that she wouldn't be so sensitive to criticism from fellow art students. Dean's rudeness is too much, but he's clearly good and being criticized by someone who is decent is refreshing? a welcome challenge? The rude parts and his poor word choice (using words like "lazy") can be ignored. I understand Evie's POV too, but as an alternative I imagined her reacting positively to finally being criticized by someone with standards and out of the twilight zone where people unhelpfully and blindly praise everything. Dean definitely needs to work on his delivery, though.

Marnie is a mess. I find her odd, interesting, clueless, shallow and incredibly offensive. Poor Evie seems to attract and tolerate people who have little sense and little consideration for her. I feel like Marnie parrots ideas because she thinks they're cool, but she doesn’t understand them and she doesn't have any actual convictions.

We’re not meant to be caged in, we’re meant to make something of ourselves and to stand out as being different. I like to imagine myself written about in some magazine far in the future, to have been a notable woman with notable things to contribute to society, not just a mother, a wife, the property of some dull, unextraordinary man.

This screams internalized misogyny. I feel like if she actually discussed and had the interests she claims to have (politics, anti-gentrification…) she would have been called out so many times by now that she wouldn't say such things. I hope Evie dumps her as a friend because she's a user who seems incapable of having any deep thoughts and plays at understanding the working class/being poor because she thinks it's cool.

There's so much going on with the Christmas family dinner. Wow…

I feel for Evie and wish her family was more supportive of her. She must have been a sweet, passive, agreeable child to not have had fights with her family about some of these things in the past. I can understand if her behavior now shocks them. I don't have a sexist family, but I was born a troublemaker, so I was caught off-guard by Evie having these conversations with her family as a college student instead of as a primary school kid. I think Evie being quiet and finally calling out her mother (of all people) as being sexist is an interesting choice. Even though she was provoked, she seems to be going for the easiest target.

I had a feeling where this chapter was headed when I read the word Catholic. From the start I should say I have a fraught relationship with organized religion and the devout. I am part of the LGBTQ community so you can imagine what it's like. I was not the least bit surprised at the things Evie's mom said. The patriarchy is religion's creation. Any country as old and deeply rooted in the Catholic Church, or any denomination, as Ireland is it's not surprising to see how blasé the older women are to the men's behavior. Women are told by the church that they are lesser than men and are expected to be unquestioningly subservient. That plays into the ages old belief that a woman is nothing if she doesn't have a man. No doubt Evie has been bombarded with those messages her entire life, subtly and overtly.

And you never question the church. So here's Evie with all these very normal thoughts, that hey, wait a minute, who says I'm lesser than a man. At the same time she's a people pleaser and pushing back against these norms being thrown at her by people she wants to please causes anxiety and stress. She wants to break free and be her own woman, but she feels a misplaced obligation to be the young woman other people want her to be. The people pleaser aspect of her personality makes it difficult to break free of the specter of Kelly. She doesn't really care what Kelly thinks of her but it still gnaws at her that a relationship went wrong. So she keeps trying to figure out why, instead of accepting that sometimes friendships really weren't meant to be, or it was the other person that changed or was a user and a false friend.

There is so much more to unpack in this chapter. It is one of those that I need to read and reread more than once to try and take in all the nuances. This is a marvelous chapter and so well written with so many layers.

Overall, I want the very same for her. I find it frustrating sometimes how every moment of her life is tainted with worry and anxiety, but I knew the story wouldn't work if she went from an anxious teenager to a suddenly normal adult without some sort of overlap. She's getting better all the time but is still riddled with worry about small, inconsequential things often. I think that's why people say that youth is wasted on the young...

That's a fair point, Claire's parents could pay the whole bill, as they clearly could afford to. I imagine that the electricity and gas bill arrangement is just something they agreed upon because it seems fair, and since Evie is living there she should have to pay for her half of it. I feel she's aware of how lucky she is to be in that situation and get that apartment for cheap so probably wants to feel like she's contributing fairly, maybe she just wasn't prepared for how lax Claire is with leaving the heat and lights on. Maybe i'll revisit this later! & Yeah, college is always difficult when you don't have money. The fees are not expensive at all, but everything else including accommodation, transport and bills are. It'd be impossible for anyone from a working class background to go if they depended on their parents money, hence why financial aid is available for everyone below a certain bracket.

I was kinda trying to portray that feeling many art students get when they go to college after being used to being the big fish in a small pond back in school. Evie was always humble about her work, but at the same time when she did show it to people they always told her it was amazing. She's become attached to the idea that being a good artist is her main asset, and that it's one of the only things she has going for her which is why she sees Dean's comments as direct attacks on her. Even strict Ida likes her work, so why doesn't he? She feels that if she's not the best at this one thing then what does she have to show for herself.

UGH. Marnie - I hate her a lot, and unfortunately she's based around a group of people I was adjacent to when I lived in Dublin, so the things she's saying are real. She's into the feminism which is obviously very important but she just picks it up the wrong end of it and insults women who don't want to live her specific lifestyle. I feel like she's the type of person to not shave her armpits, and then criticize all the other women who choose to shave for various reasons.

Yes... Christmas dinner... Evie was exactly that! I think I touched on that briefly in earlier chapters, how she was overwhelmed by the way that Kelly and Shane behaved at home because she was used to being quiet and reading books. She was a really sweet, quiet kid, but to her detriment as she's only beginning to question her upbringing now. Hmm that is interesting and I never thought about it like that! I wonder would her criticism of sexism within the family be better directed at one of the various lazy men instead.

Absolutely - and I understand that because I do too. I can only imagine, as any of us who have been involved in organized religion to some capacity have seen the intolerances that lie below the surface. Ireland has a very complex relationship with it and a very very long history of oppression, human rights violations and frankly, atrocities committed by the catholic church. My best friend at school was part of the LGBTQ+ community too, but didn't feel safe to come out until she moved to the city because of how (in 2012!!!!) people we knew were still getting attacked for being open about their sexuality. We were the first country in the world to legalize same sex marriage through a referendum, but it was in part because of our collective anger at the church and how we'd been kept under their thumb for far too long.

I wanted to show that Evie is only at the church because she has to be. He's only going through the motions and the content of the mass has meant nothing to her. She was never given the choice to be catholic because everyone here just is one, and because you couldn't get enrolled into many country schools in the 90's if you weren't baptized so everyone just did it whether they liked it or not. Her grandmother is also obviously a traditional catholic woman who has instilled the family with ideas about what man are expected to do vs what women are expected to do, and nobody questions it because it's just normal to them. Evie didn't question it either and was potentially on a path to become just like all of the others until she was blown off course by the new things she's learned about in college. (For all the hate Marnie gets - and deserves - she did help out in this regard.)

The people pleaser thing is such a catholic trait! Women must be agreeable and serve! So many of her issues come down to this, and it's not just her need to be liked by everyone, Kelly, Jude, Dean etc, it's seeped into her self image and her relationship with sexuality. Catholic guilt is so real, it's the plight of the Irish woman.

I knew this was going to be a big chapter, but the response has been really great. I'm relived everyone seems to have understood what I was trying to say, because I feel like when it comes to religion it can be so touchy. Thank you so much for your comment <3

I was kinda trying to portray that feeling many art students get when they go to college after being used to being the big fish in a small pond back in school. Evie was always humble about her work, but at the same time when she did show it to people they always told her it was amazing. She's become attached to the idea that being a good artist is her main asset, and that it's one of the only things she has going for her which is why she sees Dean's comments as direct attacks on her. Even strict Ida likes her work, so why doesn't he? She feels that if she's not the best at this one thing then what does she have to show for herself.

Got it. Thanks for explaining. I suppose that reading that scene made me feel that Evie may not be as into art as I originally thought. I guess I feel that being a big fish in a small pond is stifling and lonely, because it's hard to grow in such an environment. Your peers clearly aren't as good as you and it's hard to communicate with them about some things because they're just not on your level (and they just don't get it) and the teachers give lots of odd praise because they have to grade you on the same scale as everyone else. However, their praise always feels empty. They brush over the flaws in your work given that everyone else is much worse. So to come to an environment where others (including your peers finally!) see the flaws that you see in your own work and are willing to discuss with you how you can fix them to help you improve at what you love--I feel that that can be liberating and create a sense of community as opposed to the alien feeling that being a big fish in a small pond creates. So even though Dean is rude, I can imagine Evie being drawn to him because he gets it and he pushes her to become better. It's not that he doesn't like her work. He just sees that she's human and doesn't treat her as a talent robot. I hope this makes some sense.

She was a really sweet, quiet kid, but to her detriment as she's only beginning to question her upbringing now. Hmm that is interesting and I never thought about it like that! I wonder would her criticism of sexism within the family be better directed at one of the various lazy men instead.

I didn't really see her criticism of sexism as a criticism of sexism but as a quarrel with her mother. Her mother is also a victim, and despite her mother’s callous words, Marian seems to have done the most for Evie/cares for Evie the most and is the least able to fight back? If Evie wants to stand up and not just be mad at her mother, I feel like she would speak to her alcoholic father or even her uncle. Or if that's too much, she could simply ask her cousins to help earlier instead. She's supposedly close with Decky.

I totally get where you're coming from, and that makes a lot of sense to me. I suppose this is one of those things that'd be worth re-examining if I were to ever to a second draft of this story. The idea grew from a desire to stir up some conflict between her and Dean, but I didn't really think a lot about how someone in her exact circumstance likely would engage with criticism realistically. I suppose judging by all the stuff I've laid out about her already it's a bit random that she's not open to any critisism.

Empathy towards Marian is warranted, as she is a victim of the same things, she's just compliant in them. She certainly has done the most for Evie, and without her things would be so much worse off. Yes, if she wanted to really make a difference she likely would do that, but I can't see any of the men being very open to a conversation about sexism, unfortunately :sweat_smile:

It's really helpful to discuss these things, I feel it really helps to improve my writing and reminds me to think more about every aspect of the story as I'm writing it, so thanks for leaving such thoughtful responses <3

I totally get where you're coming from, and that makes a lot of sense to me. I suppose this is one of those things that'd be worth re-examining if I were to ever to a second draft of this story.

I just want to be clear that I like the chapters as you wrote them and think they make sense that way. I was just sharing random thoughts that came to me while reading, not trying to suggest that you change anything if you were ever to rewrite. <3

I totally see how a moderately gifted artist who prides herself on her art, and has a lot of insecurities, could react negatively to and be hurt/feel attacked by a classmate who gives mean critiques. I think Evie's actions during the dinner also make a ton of sense. I just think she's kind of compliant too (but less so than her mother). I can't see her confronting the men at dinner even in a polite way because of the real and negative consequences that might have for her.