Joyce and Walky!

Ugh.  This page.

My biggest question now is… why Ruth gotta be traumatized by this?  I mean, I might know the answer, and that answer might be that this story formed in my mind when I was young and stupid and thought sex was a bigger deal than it is.  I dunno, do most teenfolks want to hurl after they do it for the first time?  This story could have played almost exactly the same if Ruth and Ryan went off to be smoochyfaces for a while.  It could even have been pretty damn the same if Ruth enjoyed it!  But naw, dawg, had to “pile it on.”

I was trying to go for parallels between how Danny is and Ruth was, but Danny’s breakdown and buildup didn’t center around sexual humiliation.  Ruth’s did.  I want to hope that this is the case because I was more open with writing sex stuffs at this point in time versus before with Danny, and not because Ruth is a Girl and this is how Girls Have Trauma.  Did I do this because this was Ruth, and Ruth had to suffer the biggest trauma, and at the time I believed sex was the worst thing ever… or did I do this merely because she had ladyparts?  Decide for yourselves, I guess.  Sometimes not even the author can navigate his own mental quagmires.

Regardless, it feels too much like an accidental Rape Origin.  And that just seems kind of random and tacked on.  Ruth can lose her confidence in herself in several other ways.

I hate this page.  Like, bury it with all those Atari E.T. cartridges.  Nuke it from orbit, just to be sure.

It’s precisely why Dumbing of Age Ruth has a completely different “origin.”