I could tell you why I’ve been gone forever, but y'all probably care less than I do.

But during my absence, my best friend invited me to be his date to this thing (that you also don’t care about), so I got to spend a weekend with him and it was the best weekend ever. We partied. We hung out all over the place. I met his neighbors and his bosses and his new friends.

I got to go to the studio with him. The studio. I’m still not over freaking out about all the work we got to do in the studio. I can’t stop saying the word. Studio. I was in heaven. (Studio, studio, studio)

And I went to this fancy-ass event as his date that I totally didn’t belong at (and if you see the pictures on the internet, I’m the one they so politely refer to as “and date”).

But that’s neither here nor there.

You guys, I think, will like this part: I got to meet his stalker. That crazy thirteen-year-old I was telling you about? His fangirl. And that’s the reason we’re here. That and I’ve been neglecting this for too long.

Because she’s actually doing it.

I found out she’s…wait for it….you’re gonna love this one.

Seriously. She’s doing it.

She’s writing a goddamn FANFICTION!

Can I just tell you guys about it? I’ve been in the hospital a lot lately and I’d just rather share stories than make a cohesive rant, as per usual.

So I’ll tell you about her fanfiction.

She didn’t bother to change any names, places, dates, anything. It’s literally like a journal, but with a few made up things.

Really, she’s just using him as a muse (which means she’s literally using everything about him, but she’s labeled it a fanfiction. And it’s more fun for me to think of this in terms of fanfiction, because I met her…and she’s fucking obsessed with him. Pictures of him in her room that she sings too…candid shots she took, obsessed. CREEPER SHOTS!)

I’m going to give her credit, despite the fact that I find it creepy, though. She’s actually doing a good job, because she’s doing a great with one of the most important parts of fanfiction: making it a standalone.

And what I mean by that is, you don’t really have to know me or my best friend or any of our friends to understand her story (because we’re all in it (I’m the bitch that has the main love interest (my best friend) wrapped around her perfect finger, in case you were wondering. At one point, the character that is me, literally Addy, was in the hospital (surprise, surprise) and the love interest, my best friend, didn’t sleep for three days straight, because any spare time he had, he was figuring out insurance and bills and shit, and it made me look evil).

Granted, a lot of what she writes is more enjoyable if you know us, but it’s not like she said “he looked just like” and then inserted his name like a lot of fanfictions do. Okay, so a guy who is Zayn Malik, looks like Zayn…what does Zayn look like? (I get 10 points for using someone other than Harry Styles, right? I made an effort).

Unfortunately she’s stuck in that overly romanticized, obsessive imagery style where she describes absolutely everything in the most long-winded paragraphs filled with flowery language that takes days to read. But that doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. I’m just bitter because it’s creepy to me.

I’m not going to plagiarize her by copying the sentences (I also don’t want people to google them and find the story, because my best friend doesn’t know it exists and I still just find it creepy and that would be a mean thing for me to do, I feel like).

The gist is, my best friend has blue eyes as deep as the ocean and a girl could swim in them for days, hair like golden thread all disheveled like he just got out of bed (actually, he just got out of the shower, ain’t nobody got time to use hair product), cheekbones carved by angels (actually, that’s the work of genetics), and a strong jaw that screams to be kissed (but really, I’m disturbed about the thoughts she has). We won’t go into the shoulders down description, because no one has time for that. And it’s about as cliché as you’d imagine.

It’s nice that she actually describes him instead of saying he looks exactly like who he is. That’s important. Kudos to her.

However, she gets points deducted for dramatizing everything. I understand the sentiment—you certainly don’t want a boring story—but in trying to create interest, she’s totally sacrificing his character much in the way lots of fanfiction writers do.

To make the story fit, they completely change who a person is. Now, I’m not going to claim to know anything about One Direction other than their names and their first album, but I’m 99.9% positive that they aren’t heroine addicted drug lord/pimps with street cred out the ass and gangs you don’t fuck with.

I just have this feeling they aren’t.

And I don’t read fanfiction (for no particular reason other than I’m not invested enough in any fandom to really want to (I know nothing about anime, never read Harry Potter, and I seriously just figured out two days ago that 5sos is a band) but I read the summaries sometimes and lemme tell you, I don’t think I’d like it if someone portrayed me as a violent abuser/rapist/druggy. Because I doubt any of them are. Good thing I’m irrelevant.

Luckily, my best friend’s fangirl doesn’t do this. I get alternate realities (universes?) or whatever, but I feel like if you do that, you might as well just make an original character if you’re gonna change the person’s entire life and persona (but what do I know?). It’s okay to get inspiration from people. It’s not plagiarizing.

Anyway, so some of the things she’s dramatized come when she finds out more and more about his life (because she’s in his apartment all the damn time).

Like when she found out he’s abnormally flexible (which he is freakishly flexible…he can touch the bottom of his foot to the back of his head and it freaks me out because, like, when the hell is that going to be useful?), she wrote a little bit about how it made the MC (her) wonder what he was like in bed (because, for those of you who don’t know, that’s a thing guys say about flexible girls (or, at least it was big in the ‘90s ish) and that really creeped me out when she wrote that. She is too young for that shit.)

Then, she wrote how the MC sings to the love interest and he thinks she has the most perfect voice in the entire world and that bothers me, because he deliberately goes out of his way to not use subjective terms when he’s giving his opinions like that. It’s something he’s very conscious of and I feel it was ignorant of her to ignore that (which is how I’d imagine actual celebrities feel when they’re being portrayed as guys that beat their girlfriends, but what do I know?)

And when the love interest confesses to the MC that he used to be a drug addict, he cried. And I laughed so hard. My best friend has shrugged that off for years, because it’s not something to define him. Crying doesn’t change things, because he’s not an emotional person (I told you, I think he’s a sadist).

Currently, twelve chapters in, the MC is trying to get the love interest to stop drinking and I just want to tell her now that that is a losing battle. Give it up, girlfriend. You’re not going to “save” anyone. He’s not an alcoholic, because he doesn’t go to the meetings (and that’s not my words, but you get the idea).

Anyway, the point is, she’s got his personality all wrong in parts, because she’d rather let her interpretation overpower her material. (And I’m not the one who labeled it as a fanfiction, so if she would have just said it was a story and she used him as inspiration, I would have been cool with it. But if you’re gonna write about someone, don’t write about the “ideal” them to you).

That’s something important in fanfiction: as much as you need to be true to yourself, you need to be true to your muses as well. No, I don’t think you know these celebrities or book characters, but don’t ignore every persona they emit for the sake of ease.

You can’t change everything about someone and still claim it’s them. You just can’t.

And that’s my rant. Maybe something was useful. The key points being:

1. Make it a standalone by having enough description,

2. Don’t overdo the descriptions and drown your readers in clichés,

3. Don’t completely ignore the personality of your muse and still claim it’s exactly like them, and

4. It’s okay to simply use someone as inspiration, you don’t have to write an entire fanfiction just because you were inspired by someone.

So cool. Yeah. You’ll probably hear a lot more about this fanfiction, because another friend and I text every time she updates and it just gets better and better. I shouldn't make fun of her, but she shouldn’t be creepy. (And I’m purposely not sharing her name or story title. It’s not a bad story, really. It’s just weird!) I’m waiting for the chapters where I start to come into play. Because so far I’ve not been a good.

You know the first thing she said to me?

She was one of the first people I met in his building and the first thing she did was give me the up down, and when I told her it was nice to meet her, she turned to my best friend and said “not as pretty as I expected.” She then went on to say “I mean, you’re a lot smaller in person.” 

And this is one of the plethora of reasons why I dislike kids, but either way, I just laughed it off. She’s not wrong. I get that a lot (that I’m smaller in person), but she couldn’t have done without the pretty part. Ouch.

Anyway, for my funny story…let’s see.

Well, one day when I was in the studio, my best friend left me to go run a few errands and I was hanging out with some of the band. And we're all friends and we hang out, and they think I'm funny, so everything I say they think is a joke.

Anyway, so the drummer got done with a track he was working on and we were listening to it and one guy said it was really good and I said I was going to faint.

But I wasn’t saying it as a compliment (although he did a good job!). I was literally going to faint.

Then I did.

When I finally regained consciousness, they were all leaning over me and one of them asked if I actually fainted. I was out for a good three or four minutes, so obviously I had. But they were genuinely confused as to what happened (because sometimes I’m fine and then sometimes I’m just on the floor).

And when my best friend got back he asked them why they didn’t try to take me to the hospital (I was fine, I'm glad they didn't) and their answer was “We thought she was really committed to the act”.

That’s what I get for being a joker. But, they did have a great time imitating me just fainting for the rest of the weekend. Apparently they’ve never seen someone just fall over. I didn’t appreciate it, but they did. And that’s my embarrassing story.