Once You Go Hood.....

Author's Note - Thoughts & Character Breakdowns

Hey guys! In case you didn't know, my name is Rae. I'm 21 years old and I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio. When I first began writing this story I wanted to write something that was different from what I had been reading. You always see the cliche' stories about the good girl falling for the hood nigguh and then turning him into a goody-two-shoes ass nigguh lol I didn't wanna do that. I always planned on Kyra going "bad" and staying bad. (Hence the name Once You Go Hood) That's why this story started off so completely cliche'. She was everything a good girl normally is described as. Smart, well-behaved, innocent, etc. And when she met RJ, she was still clinging to that. And instead of her influencing him to give up his dangerous life, I made it so that he began to rub off on her. Soon her mannerisms mirrored his and her sexual appetite matched his. But that was just one dimension of what I wanted from this story.

I also wanted to create a character that was unlikable. I think I might have failed at that though lol But still, Kyra was meant to be a character that was arrogant, reckless and selfish. To be quite honest, I don't even like Kyra and I created her lmao as crazy as that sounds. She's very selfish in the way she sees the world for most of the story. She can always create a way to blame her problems on everybody else but never sees her own bullshit. Like the whole situation with Belinda actually kinda pissed me off as I was writing it lol Belinda did nothing wrong to Kyra for her to be calling her out of her name. And if some girl you didn't know showed up on your doorstep, cussing at you and making threats, you would feel some typa way too. Belinda is a grown ass woman and she was correct when she said that if her and Kyra come to blows, she was gon handle it. I don't know many people who would willingly get they ass whooped lol Kyra was being a disrespectful bratt and she needed to be put in her place.

Also, it was important to me that while being "bad", Kyra wasn't a hoe. Some of you all still labeled her that but she actually never had oral sex with that may people. And she hadn't lost her virginity until she got back with Dre. Y'all just thought she was a hoe because she wasn't in love with them nigguhs. As it stands, she's only fucked Dre, only give head to RJ and received from RJ, Sire, and Louis. That's 4 nigguhs in two years. That's not a hoe lol. But anyways, like I said, it was important to me that she was "bad" but she wasn't trashy. She was hood but she wasn't ratchet. 

I will say that I think overall, I'm very pleased with how much everybody loves this story but I think I could have done a lot better with it as far as organization. It has a lot of twists and turns lmao and i know that's probably why you guys love it so much, but this kinda story would never sell as a novel. It was just too much goin on all at once. Some of the twists were intentional and some of them just manifested in the midst of tryna give yall a quick upload lol. But it's the way I write though, whatever comes to mind is what I type and if I like it, I keep it.

Now I'ma do a couple character breakdowns.

My fave character in the whole story is Mia, for obvious reasons. She just a real ass bitch lmao. Like, she down to earth as fuck and even when Kyra was on her bullshit, she stayed loyal and made sure Kyra wasn't alone. She made sure to let Kyra make her own decisions and go through what she had to go through until she asked for help and THEN let Kyra know the mf'in deal. She knew that Kyra was hard-headed and stubborn and that couldn't nobody tell her nothin unless she was willing to listen. She had sympathy for Kyra but she didn't baby her and I heavily fuck with her for that. I loved writing Mia's POVs just because it was easier to scope out situations from an informed outside view. She knew how Kyra felt but she could also point out Kyra's flaws, something that Kyra would never do because she's so damn self-absorbed. All in all, I heavily fuck with Mia lmao Real or not.

Asia. Woooo, ya'll did not like Asia LMFAO. Like the pure hatred that ya'll gave this girl was unreal lmfaooo. Asia is a weird character to me. Like she strated off being the closest sis but somewhere along the way, she morphed into this jealous, shady ass, frenemy. I hadn't originally planned on making her turn out like that but it just kinda worked, you know? And then when I started having her give her biased opinion on Kyra and Dre's relationship, she definitely became that character you just love to hate lol However, I do believe that she had a few valid points. She wasn't 100% cool, she was still fake as fuck, but every now and then she had a point. Like when she was talking about defending her brother if somebody blamed him for the accident, I woulda said the same shit tbh. It wasn't his fault and nobody shouldn't have came at him reckless for it. Period point blank, Kyra was being her naturally reckless self and decided to be a speed demon on the freeway. Like come on now, idc how upset she was. The whole world don't stop because one person is upset. But I also agree that it was nobody's fault because, as it was revealed, somebody swerved into her lane causing her to crash. But yeah, Asia was fairly easy to write for. I just kept her biased asf lol.