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
