#where’s my ap lang cred HUH

[t-w-i-l-l-e-r]

so I completely forgot I made this post until recently (I’ve been organizing my blog somewhat) but I wanted to add bc I’ve been thinking about it more n like!!!!! Jess, Chunk, and the Road Trip to Infinity is a mostly fluffy teen romance/family roadtrip story about a trans girl and her bestie on their senior trip. Alice Isn’t Dead is a gory existential horror roadtrip story about a woman whose wife mysteriously disappeared and, along with her, the woman’s only sense of safety. When I wrote the 1st post, I was thinking about how it was kinda funny that the road-trip stories I was most familiar with were almost completely opposite, either BLOOD BLOOD GUTS or LOVE LOVE CRUSH. but as I thought about it more, i realized that those two versions weren’t opposites at all.

Coming of age is scary for anybody, that’s just a part of the human experience. I think a lot about how tons of the most popular horror movies/most common horror tropes revolve around teenagers bc it’s a frightening time!! Teens r finally being exposed 2 how big the world is but they have so few references 4 it and understand so little of it. It’s that mix of residual childhood making the teen protags wanna run away screaming to the protection of the adult figures in their life (if they even have protective adult figures in their life, which is a whole other element) and that newly blossoming desire to be an “adult” that makes them want to fight back and defend themselves. It makes more sense in horror movies when teens utterly fail to prevent/escape the scary shit happening to them bc they’re so naive and inexperienced, why should they know how to take down a bloodthirsty slasher killer or an out-of-this-world monster? Coming-of-age and horror r linked in a lot of neat ways.

AND the road trip story is the perfect example of this. In the coming-of-age variant (like Jess chunk and the road trip to infinity), the teen is thrust in the most literal sense into the big wide world that they don’t understand. Who knows what the fuck could be out there!!!!! Killers!!! Monsters!!!! Regular ppl who r Just Kinda Mean!!!! Regular ppl who r Just Kinda Nice n make them Feel Things!!!!!!!! Terror abounds!!!!!!!! Even if the teen has an adult with them, there’s still the internal fear of “what if I’m not good enough. What if I’m too small for the big world and I was never meant to be here. What if all my aspirations for adulthood are SPLATTERED on the hood of the CAR like a fucking MOSQUITO OH GOD OH FUCK!!!!!!!!!”

But then u have Alice Isn’t Dead n other road trip stories with adult protags (tho Sylvia in Alice Isn’t Dead brings elements of the coming of age story into it bc she’s a teen but she’s distinctly a side character, albeit a very important one). The main character of Alice Isn’t Dead (I’m not saying her name bc it’s intentionally hidden in the podcast, tho not in the book so 🤷🤷) had a sense of security in her adulthood, in her identity, in her life. She, in her mind, had come of age. She was done!!!! She made it!!!!!!! Adulthood!!!!!!! She had a loving wife, a stable job, the beginnings of a domestic fairytale. And then she didn’t. It was all taken away from her and she finds herself on the road having to go through it all again, having to track down the stability she found to get her through her coming of age in the first place (she met Alice in college, after all). The horror of coming of age wasn’t as far as she thought it was, and thats maybe even scarier than going through it the first time. Yikes. Late 20s, am I right?

All of this + the distinct marginalization that the main characters face. The queer road trip story. The POC road trip story. They r coming of age in a space that doesn’t want them to come into anything, that doesn’t want them to exist at all. Both of these main characters are seeing the big scary world and realizing that it’s not so friendly to ppl like them. Sure they might encounter monsters or killers but they can run from those, fight those. What do they do when they encounter the cashier who looks them up and down but doesn’t say anything? What do they do with that? What do they do when they encounter symbols that hate them but ppl wearing the symbols that… don’t? Or don’t seem to? How can they run from the fear that they don’t and never will belong anywhere? How can they run from their skin, their voice, their accent, their presentation, themselves? Rest stops are a lot less restful when you’re constantly looking over your shoulder.

but both of them also highlight another important aspect of the road-trip story: connection. The trip brings Jess and her friend closer together, allowing the main romance to blossom. As I said earlier, the Alice Isn’t Dead narrator finds a young girl named Sylvia on the road and takes her in, giving them both the companionship they need to make it through their individual (and now shared) struggles. Both stories feature scenes of brief friendships. In Jess and Chunk, Jess meets a fellow transfem in a small town and is comforted by her confidence. In Alice Isn’t Dead, the narrator briefly chats with the chef of an Ethiopian restaurant, nourished by his food and conversation. They meet people who support them and get closer to the ppl who always did, leaning on them when the fear seems overwhelming. And that’s its own kind of fear—letting someone see you look stupid and naive—but it’s a different kind. It’s the knowledge that the car they’re bundled up in is a 1000 pound metal death machine going way faster than any human being was biologically made to go but also the safest place in the world right now bc it has their family inside.

and that’s the thesis of my banger fucking dissertation, ig. Love and fear aren’t so separate after all, for better or for worse. If u have any recs 4 road trip stories u think contribute 2 this comment or tag or smth I’d love recs!!!! I know my pulls r pretty specific lol but they were the only ones I could think of. Happy pride month, keep road-tripping on!!!!!

This has probably been said before more cohesively but I’ve been listening to Alice Isn’t Dead and thinking about Jess, chunk, and the road trip to infinity (a book I liked in middle school but have complicated feelings about now) and about road trip stories and specifically (but not exclusively) queer road trip stories and about how they r (in my experience) either coming-of-age stories or horror stories and how those genres might not be as different as I used to think so. anyway comment like subscribe hmu in like 12 years n I’ll have a banger fucking dissertation for ya