Only Mostly Devastated

by Sophie Gonzales

“You can kiss whoever the fuck you want,” I said finally. “And it’s no one’s business but yours.”

The fact that this scene so closely follows the previous scene made it interesting for me to write. As an author, when you create a character, you have to know them inside and out, and that includes knowing how they would react in a certain situation. I personally reject the idea that a main character’s choices are an indication that the book (or author) is wholly endorsing the action (in fact, by the time you finish ONLY MOSTLY DEVASTATED, one thing you might notice about my writing is I prefer to create conflict situations where no one character is entirely in the right. I believe life is usually more complicated than good vs. evil, and enjoy creating situations where each reader will come away with a different interpretation of who was more in the right according to their own life experiences. But I digress!). Here, Ollie is faced with a choice; comfort Niamh, a character who’s been nothing but kind to him, and who has been shamed by her friend . . . or comfort Lara, an objectively unkind character, who started the argument in which she was hurt, but who has no one who is likely to have noticed why she’s as hurt as she is, except for Ollie. If I had been sitting at that lunch table, I think I would have been inclined to go after Niamh. Ollie, however, is a gay teenager, who’s gone from a largely accepting environment to one where he’s feeling picked on and shamed every day. He’s noticed that someone in his orbit is probably queer, and is possibly feeling some of those very emotions that he’s struggling with. Finally, he’s correctly pegged that he’s the only one at this stage who’s noticed Lara’s feelings for Renee. This, combined with Ollie’s habit of letting people walk all over him, and his penchant for helping others he thinks need his assistance, no matter the cost to him, made his choice clear to me. He would go after Lara. This is one of those odd things about writing fiction; sometimes, for the story to make sense and for a character to feel real, you have to allow them to make a choice you probably wouldn’t make yourself.