Helpful, Meet Your Opposite

So, as I’ve mentioned, sometimes when I’m starting a story I like to use the people around me as sounding boards for my brainstorming.

Roomie’s not a fan of this choice (mostly because it's remarkably easy to creep her out). And as a result of the number of times I’ve annoyed her with my open ended questions, she's developed ways of thwarting me. One of her favorites is to list the names of books, movies, or characters that are tangentially related to what I’m talking about, while also totally irrelevant, and often nonsensical.

For instance, yesterday we had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: I’m trying to decide on a villain.

Roomie: I don’t want to be part of this conversation.

Me: Should it be the guy calling in all the money owed on the family home and threatening to throw them out into the street? Or maybe –

Roomie: What kind of fairy tale has tax evasion?

Me: No, it’s not tax evasion. It’s more like a balloon payment.

Roomie: What kind of fairy tale has a balloon payment?

Me: You’ve never read a story where the hero's journey starts to save the family home?

Roomie: That’s very Hansel & Gretel of you.

Me: That doesn’t even make sense.

Roomie: You know, breadcrumbs.

Me: Stop it.

Roomie: Ursula. Villian. Boomsa.

Me: You are the definition of unhelpful.

I'm going to leave it up to you to decide which one of us deserves the title of "poor, put-upon roommate."