Natale Felix
Bio
Writer. As you're reading this, there's roughly an 80% chance that I'm daydreaming about someday building my own house.
Stories (14/0)
What Twilight can teach us about teenage girls
Twilight is already old enough that it’s entirely possible that it has some fans who don’t remember the media hype around the franchise when it was at its peak popularity, namely when the first movie came out in 2008. It. Was. Huge. The hype was routinely compared to Beatlemania it was so big, and while other demographics did enjoy Twilight, they were a small enough portion of the fanbase that they often made their own separate groups and communities surrounding the series. The general understanding was that Twilight mainly appealed to teenage girls. And, like anything that appeals to teen girls, it was subject to weirdly personal hatred from grown men everywhere. I have this ridiculous memory of walking into a Hastings bookstore in my hometown, maybe two years into the Twilight era, and I see a local author all set up at a little table with his books. At the time I’m a teen girl who loves to read and wants to be published one day, so I go over and start talking to him about it. The book looked to be in line with my tastes at the time, the cover had like a skinny, pale goth chick on it, and the title was blood red. It was a vampire book, and I asked the author, y’know, what made you want to write this? And he told me “Well y’know, I read those Twilight books, and they were just so bad, y’know? I was sure I could do better!”
By Natale Felix2 years ago in Geeks
Maritime Trance
I awoke in another world. The tide licked at my toes as it rolled in towards where I lay on the sand. I tried to breathe, and a wall of sand in my throat stopped the effort in its tracks. My eyes snapped open and I scrambled clumsily to my feet and towards the surf, retching and coughing out a mouthful of the stuff. The water lapped at my waist as I threw myself into it, collapsing into the sea. I took in gulps of salt water to flush out the sand and gasped in the cool air when I surfaced. With salt coating my tongue, I could breathe again.
By Natale Felix3 years ago in Fiction
Renaming Dragontail Peak
The stage is set. The meager applause dies in the air, its praise fading faster than it had come. All the middle school students sit in rows on the retractable bleachers in the gym which, on days like today, doubles as an amphitheater. The teachers have constructed a makeshift stage underneath the basketball hoops, a simple raised platform with a decorative garland stapled all around its edges, little paper stars hanging from the shiny purple plastic fringe. The cheap decor doesn’t do much to make the gym look any less like a gym, with its giant scoreboards all over the bland cinder block walls. P.E. is Sascha’s least favorite class, and as such, the gym is her least favorite part of the school. Today, in particular, has done nothing to change that.
By Natale Felix3 years ago in Fiction
Ugly Art as Perfectionist Therapy
A little over a year ago, I’d reached a breaking point. The pandemic brought my college education to a screeching halt, and in the quietness that followed, I began to realize just how disconnected I was from my own creativity. I had 30,000 words written for a novel that I couldn’t bear to touch anymore, I wasn’t writing poetry at all, I hadn’t written music in years, and my sketchbook was constantly sitting untouched and nearly empty. I was frustrated with myself all the time. I got nothing done, and anytime I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to just start.
By Natale Felix3 years ago in Motivation
