Hello! We're currently still reading through the post-self books; the last two should get here soon. We wanted to thank you for writing the series itself. As a system from romania that just so happened to have a skunk that heavily relates to Sasha for obvious reasons, it really ended up meaning more to us than we ever expected. To our skunk Luka specifically, inspiring them to try to move on and find new meaning after years of sulking and yearning for the past.
Apologies if it's a weird ask; we wanted to show some appreciation as a reader. What made you write Ioan Balăn as romanian? I rarely if ever hear of our country be mentioned let alone written about /genq
Thank you so much! That is so heartening to hear, and I am glad that they have found a good home. The skunks really are sort of the main characters, with the Bălans being mainly embroiled by accident.
I picked up a brief fascination with the Romanian language shortly after highschool, how it has a very Romantic and Baltic feel to it. It lasted only a few weeks, I am sorry to say, before the fixation drifted, and I have since found it difficult to get back into; my attempts at learning have been largely unsuccessful. However, when I started writing Qoheleth, it popped back into my head as a choice. This was solidified in Toledot when some of the stories about how phys-side changed over time were explored. As the Western Fed and Sino-Russian Bloc were formed, it made since that central and Eastern Europe would find themselves stuck in the middle and thus rather torn, so Ioan's backstory was thus filled out further, and by the end of Selected Letters, you get a sense of what life was like, how ey related to the loss of eir parents, eir early life in Cristești, and just how close ey was to Rareș.
Tangentially, this is the reason for Yared (Ethiopia), Ezekiel (post-split Israel), user11824 (maori New Zealand), and so on: countries and cultures and languages I am fascinated with and wanted an excuse to research.
Sasha and AwDae are just from Boulder, Colorado, though, since I am intimately familiar with it, having grown up there :P
Thank you again! Means a lot to hear from folks~