to be good at writing fiction you must first stop looking at it as an escape from reality but a mechanism through which to process it
Thank you, tumblr user catmask, for summarizing why a huge chunk of popular speculative fiction published in the last few years fell incredibly flat for me
- Squid Maids helped me put into words why the desire to be something is confirmation enough to seek it out
- and helped me realize I was neurodivergent, whoops haha
- Cat Wishes started me down the long road of accepting that it's okay to be selfish when it comes to your own needs
- the beginning of Substitute Familiar was about my fears of complications from upcoming major surgery and learning how to trust the people who take me in their care (another really long road)
- ...and if/when things go wrong, if you have support, you can still make it work
- and conversely, Feline Therapy was about how sometimes you're right and they're wrong and people trying to help you don't, in fact, always know what's best for you, even if their intentions are in the right place
- ...but that doesn't mean you can't find a way to make up and work things out afterwards; we are all shades of greys
- the longest short story in Substitute Familiar Stories was born from my fervent, desperate desire for class solidarity and punishments other than exile within already fragile communities
- Plant Lamp was a big ball of feelings about (often self-imposed) isolation and what a giant mess I was when I started transitioning
- Cat Wishes Stories was about a lot of things, but primarily about how it's okay to change
- and Her Majesty The Prince is about all of the above and so much more
- ...but has increasingly been a way for me to discover how freeing it is to write flawed characters, and through that, how I can learn to accept my own flaws and love myself regardless
- Restless Town — written to process life after school. "Disappearance" in particular was written to process the feeling of wanting to get away from traumatic and abusive situations. Spoilers for later in life, I guess.
- A Wildness of the Heart — "Jump" was also written for similar feelings surrounding "Disappearance", and "Limerent Object" came during a strange process of spiritual discernment.
- Post-Self in general has been a way to explore burgeoning feelings of identity, and how the various limitations and freedoms of the world impact those.
- Qoheleth — All those feelings on mental health and anxiety? All those thoughts on gender and how it works in society? That intense phobia of being trapped? Yeeeah...
- Toledot — Fears of manipulation and how it appears in myself, how to be earnest, how to engage with others in my life nudging me about on both a grand and also very personal scale. May's fears are mine, as are Yared's.
- Nevi'im — Helplessness in the face of forces well outside your control, such as those True Name experiences during [SPOILER], and those that Codrin feels early on. Consider also: coming to terms with the necessity of vulnerability.
- Mitzvot — How to work with fear — true, primal fear — as well as an overriding need to help that is a) good and admirable and a loveliness, and b) has the potential to be unwelcome or intrusive, or even counterproductive. Also hello plurality.
- Marsh — I lost so many friends in 2020-2022 and wrote so much on processing grief for my MFA, and it was so hard. It was so hard. I needed to externalize that.
- Idumea — Oh hi graphomania. Hi worries about dreams. Hi worries about suicide. Hi yet another instance of writing my own fucking recurring dreams.
- April May Yet Come (in progress) — The anxiety of holding onto a less than idea situation because you do not know what the alternative holds for the future.
- Hapax Legomenon (in progress) — Big feelings on subtle influencing, but a different sort from that in Toledot.
I want to get things out of what I write, and I want readers to as well. It is through these works that I have grown, and have grown closer to the types of people I cherish in my life.
