#I did not do power fantasies as a kid! projecting myself onto characters has always been unappealing

[pigeonfancier]

I never draw fanart, but the realisation that I could illustrate my favorite parts of The Lion Hunters' books is very nearly enough to make me reconsider that stance.

It was just such a lovely book as a multiracial, nosy ass kid! And it's still such a complete delight on setting, prose, plot, and the characters even as an adult. And if I did a few scenes, then I could make new slipcovers for my copies of the books, too..

Maybe once I finish this comic scene, haha. It'll be nice to take a break from drawing one nosy, reckless kid to go and draw another.

[bl00dlight]

about people who think you're unfair when it comes to depicting aemond... are just delusional who mayhaps read aemond x reader or fanfictions or some headcanons... aemond is and will always be a villainous person, when he was a kid he wanted to bash the head of his nephew with a rock ( this resulting in him losing an eye and he deserves it, sorry nog sorry ) + his pursue for powers will be his well-deserved downfall. he's a raging misognist like the rest of the entire family, like... aww he is crying when helaena bluntly tells him the truth ? hope he'll rot with his guilt. you are totally right, he's a piece of shit and i can't wait to see his demise.

I mean AHAHAHAHAHHAHA. Speak your truth diva.

Look I love Aemond. Okay... let me just say.

BUT, yes no you're right like. He is fucking awful and the worst. And I do want to see him rot with his guilt a little, especially what he did to Helaena. Like I love him, and I understand him. And I do feel sympathy for him.

If I was Helaena would I have have said yes before he'd been finished his sentence? Yes. Would I have girl bossed it and proposed to him like Rhaenyra did to Daemon? Yes. Would I hypothetically let this fictional man suck and fuck on me?.... undeniably. Is this a parasocial relationship? Yes.

But it's undeniable that so many girlies on here fucking act like tradwives defending their right wing, MRA adjacent, wife beating man. Like you can want to cook him dinner and also call him out for genocide. Really gets me concerned about... well... how some of yall interact with men irl. A man like Aemond irl, is an incel.

Someone said this on reddit about the balcony scene, that it was like when an incel goes up to his crush to try and get her to be on his side before he shoots up a school. And AHAHHA exactly.

They act as if Aemond is indeed a victim through and through, who has done no wrong and is a sweetypie. And is it self insert fluff fics fault? Yes it is. People are attracted to Ewan... and their idea of Aemond. Not really Aemond as he is. And many don't want to interact with analysis of his character. Which is fine. No hate, you do you. But it is a problem when others make it fans like myself, problem.

And as someone with a disorganised attachment style? As someone who upon watching the Harry Potter series as a child who had their sexual awakening upon seeing both Draco and Luicus Malfoy. As someone who has been a Sharpay Evans defender since it came out and as someone who agreed with Rosalie Cullen that Bella was a boring ass... whiny as bitch....

I gotta say? Mean, evil and toxic platinum blondes? I'm here for them and I love them. And I am basically attracted to Aemonds character/interested in him because of the fact he is a fucking asshole. Okayyyy soooooo. Don't get me wrong I love the idea of soft, vunerable Aemond. But I can only love that because it's a rare thing for him. Because he's main mode is acting like a horror movie villain. I've always been about that life of loving dark characters. It seems many upon here are just... well... they find him hot and wanna smash. Which is valid. But it's not valid to project your personal sexual/romantic fantasies onto other fans who are just... discussing canon characteristics of Aemond.

And even reddit neckbeards do it to because they relate to Aemond. They'll swear he was this valiant, dutiful, scorned boy. They'll swear he wasn't a Valyrian supremacist. They'll swear he would never hurt or betray his family. But it's like? So basically how the fuck does someone campaign for the fucking third reich *House Strong Edition* be day and be a loving family man by night who would never betray his family if he felt abandoned/humiliated or hurt by them? So you know... the fanboys who thump the book like it's the bible also are FUCKING ANNOYING.

It's actually crazy.

[5x16]

I’ve seen a lot of posts by the meta blogs I a used to follow talking about how they believe that somewhere along the lines of the final CW execs stepped in and put restrictions on what they could and could not do with the final. That might seem like cope but imo it’s not out of the question, seeing as when Dabb and Berens tried to get wayward sisters off the ground, a spin off that was going to have queer woc protagonists the CW rejected it. But even if the execs did step in thar doesn’t excuse it.

Because my friends on this fine day I’m thinking about The Legend of Korra. I’m thinking about how tlok got fucked over by nickelodeon on a near constant basis. How the queer relationship was constantly censored and repressed not by the writers, but by the execs that controlled what went to air. How it was a fucking KIDS SHOW which has much more evidence of being hindered by execs than SPN and it STILL gave us a satisfying ending and a good conclusion for a queer relationship. Were things left a little ambiguous? Sure, but that ambiguity was cleared right up in the comics. They never shyed away from the gay relationship they had created they always did the most they could. Spn could’ve done the same. Why didn’t they?

Because their ashamed. They’ve always been ashamed to have a fanbase that was predominantly queer and female. They were ashamed that we were the people who latched onto the show and related to it instead of the straight white men they clearly wanted. It’s not Dean that’s homophobic it’s the show itself that would not let him grow as a character because they wanted him to be the brooding, toxicly masculine hero in every other goddamn show made for that type of audience. But unfortunately for the show runners, individual writers gave him more depth. They explored his trauma, his soft side even queer coded him and that meant so much to so many people including myself. So many marginalised people were actually able to feel seen in stories that were supposed to be about some dumbfuck straight man power fantasy. But at the end of the day the ppl that want him to be only that still had the power and deans depth was erased.

So I’ll think of korra. A queer woc protagonist that had a genuinely compelling arc about healing from depression and PTSD. A character that had to go through so much suffering just because of who she was and in the end came out stronger because of it. Someone who grew and changed and healed. A character who’s writers weren’t uncomfortable with marginalised people projecting onto her because they weren’t afraid to admit that she herself was marginalised.

Dean I’m so sorry. You deserved the treatment korra got and you didn’t get it.

[scifrey]

2019 Writing Round Up

The new year is here, and with it everyone is talking about what they wrote this past year. The last quarter of 2019 was a brutal rollercoaster for me, emotionally and personally, so it’s good for me to have the chance to sit here and reflect on what I accomplished and the good things that happened too.

2019 started with receiving a grant from the Toronto Arts Council for The Maddening Science – said grant went to research materials for the novel, a new computer, printer, and keyboard, and paying off some debts. But 2019 also started in a place of utter burn-out, having slammed through writing, editing, and publishing five big novels in three years, as well as rewriting a feature film and completing the scripts for three seasons of a webseries.

I was also working two dayjobs – one first thing in the morning, for an hour and a half, and then a standard eight-hour shift in the evenings which got me home at around 10pm – so my sleep schedule was a mess and I was having trouble not only making time to write, but concentrating when I did have the time.

I started the year in a place of complete exhaustion and mild frustration that neither of my book series had really caught on, and as my agent once said, “burned out from tried to break out.”  I’m not happy to say that I think I still occupy that place a full year later; but I’ve had the opportunity to rest more, and begin to refill my creative well again, and to reclaim my writing space by no longer needing a roommate.

I’m not quite there yet – turns out finishing two series in four years really takes it out of you – but maybe in a few more months I’ll be ready to sit down and begin to spin out a new novel. In the mean time, I’ve got lots of irons in the fire, as you’ll see.

January

The first third of 2019 was dedicated to rewriting The Skylark’s Sacrifice a second time. I’d rewritten it in the last third of 2018 and my editor ended up agreeing that while the rewrite was exactly what she asked for, we should not have gone down that street in the first place. It was what was asked of me, but it didn’t work. So I took it back to the drawing board, and started the re-write all over again.

I also published WORDS FOR WRITERS: The DO-ING Trap.

I finished the edits/polish on A Woman of the Sea, which I had begun in October 2018 and loaded the book onto Wattpad in preparation for serializing it.

February

I spent February rewriting and jobhunting. I tried to write a short story and Did Not Do Well. It’s half done and likely to end up on the Pile Of Unfinished Tales.

At least I got some new words on the page with WORDS FOR WRITERS – Beta Readers.

And I began releasing A Woman of the Sea a chapter at a time on Valentine’s Day.

March

I completed the Skylark rewrites and handed them over to Reuts Publications.  I also published WORDS FOR WRITERS – From Signing to Signing.

At this point I tried to start The Maddening Science, the book I received a Toronto Art’s Council Grant for in 2018, and bashed out a few chapters and a few scenes. But something was off about it, and I couldn’t pinpoint why, so I kept going into the file and only put a few hundred words in here and there. I couldn’t really sit down and dig in, and because I don’t believe in Writer’s Block as a mystical magical reason for why people can’t write (there are always reasons), I had to step back to try to figure out why I was struggling. I assumed it was probably because I was in the middle of job interviews and decided to try again later.

April

I started a new copywriting job, leaving my other two dayjobs, and it sucked up all my brainpower and creativity and made it very hard to want to sit down and compose yet more words at the end of the day.

I resumed working piecemeal on The Maddening Science, pecking out what I could one molasses-slow sentence at a time. I realized that the incidents in the news regarding the current political comment and the toxic white supremacist misogyny that is rampant in our society today has made it very hard to figure out how to tell a responsible story about a supervillain as the protagonist.

I’m still working on that. In the mean time, while I figure out how to restructure the tale, the book and the progress blog are on hiatus.

May

Still brain-dead from work, I only managed to bash out WORDS FOR WRITERS: How do social media and writing/publishing work together?

June

There were some final edits on The Skylark’s Sacrifice to be discussed, but I really did nothing this month beyond marketing pushes and watching all the webseries I judged for TOWebfest.

July

The director of my feature film, To a Stranger, was going to start shopping the script around to executive producers, so before he did that I got some actorfriends together to do a table read. The read, and their feedback, revealed some character motivation gaps in the film, and I set about organizing their notes and figuring out how to solve the issues.

I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS – How To Write a Synopsis.

This was also the month of TOWebfest, the festival itself, and I spent a lovely day with fellow creators and spoke to some executive producers about my own webseries to try to garner interest.

I was a guest at Pretty Heroes Con for the first time and LOVED it. It’s great to celebrate strong female leads in SF/F and I loved Sailor Moon as a kid, so I was in nostalgic nirvana. It was lovely to introduce those Girl Power-loving fans to The Skylark’s Saga.

August

I restructured and rewrote To a Stranger, added extra characters and extra scenes to clear up some character motivation in the screenplay. It’s now back with the director and I hope to hear that he’s got a production house and an Exec attached to the project soon.

I appeared at FanExpo Toronto to do some panels, sell some books, and judged the short fiction contest. I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How to Create a Pitch Package.

September

The Skylark’s Sacrifice was published! Yay! I had a wonderful launch party at Bakka Phoenix, and got to simultaneously launch the incredible book trailer for the duology animated by Elizabeth Hirst to a song by Victor Sierra. Friends Adrianna Prosser and Eric Metzloff, and Danforth Brewery made it extra special.

I also got to read at Word on the Street, which was been a career-long dream, reading on the new Across the Universe Stage.

However, September was also the month when I lost the copywriting job. I saw it coming, so I was shocked when it happened and how it went down, but not surprised. I wasn’t fitting in well with the team, the original project I had been hired for had been vetoed by the execs, work was being taken away from me and given to freelancers, and I didn’t have the training they wanted (though that makes me wonder why they hired me in the first place.) In retrospect it’s been a blessing, as the workplace was not at all a good fit for me and was slowly becoming toxic, but at the time it was a devastating blow to my confidence and my coffers.

Just a few days after I was fired, on my 37th birthday, I won a Watty Award for A Woman of the Sea. Happy birthday to me! I was offered a place among the Wattpad Stars program and accepted – and wow, is there a lot of paperwork for that – and I’m still trying to figure out what benefits the program offers. (Though I’m pretty chuffed with my free Canva Premium subscription!) A Woman of the Sea was featured on the home page as an Undiscovered Gem and as of today has about 82k reads. Whoa!

I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How to Plan a Series.

October

I spent most of the month sleeping and crying and working through how I felt about getting fired. When one identifies oneself as a writer, to finally get a job in writing was a thrill and felt like a confirmation that although I was struggling with my next book, I was a writer and I’d get through it. Being fired from the job – even though the reason was an exec decision to eliminate my project and thus my role – felt like a very personal blow. I wasn’t a writer after all. (Or at least, that’s what it felt like).

This had me thinking long and hard. Especially about where I wanted my writing career to go next – as much I’ve been writing in the realm of SF/F the past decade, I’ve begun to realize that was I really am is a Character-Driven Romance writer. Romance set in spec fic and fantasy realms, sure, but Romance and Character Work are my wheelhouse and how I should be selling myself.

This realization has been pretty freeing because it means that the frustrations and roadblocks I’ve been coming up against can maybe be dissolved by reframing my brand and rethinking my career map.

Wattpad added the sample of City By Night that’s on Wattpad to their Halloween Reads list on the homepage and I decided to put the whole novella up on the site for people to read. Read it now, though. It won’t stay up forever as the eBook rights to the novel are signed with an indie publisher. This is just a limited-time promotion.

And knowing that readers were asking what I would be posting next on Wattpad after A Woman of the Sea, I rejigged Triptych for the site and started serializing it from the start. You can read it here. This story also won’t stay up forever, for the same reason.

I also started serializing Words for Writers on Wattpad. I won’t be copying over all 75+ articles I have on my website, just the ones that are specifically useful for Watties.

I also polished a webseries and sent it to a producer with a major broadcaster after our convo at TOWebfest for consideration. I’ve followed up but there’s no reply. I’ll follow up again in January 2020 but I can pretty well assume that No Answer is my ‘No’ Answer.

I am thinking about maybe pitching it as a graphic novel in the future, though I’m going to have to reach out to my friends who write them for publishers to figure out how to put at pitch together.

November

In 2017 I handed over a YA contemporary re-telling of “Northanger Abbey” to my agent, and it was lukewarmly received by both her and the handful of editors she showed it to. It was then shelved for possible future reworking.

In the first part of the NaNoWriMo month, I decided to tackle this reworking, and I was still wrestling mentally with The Maddening Science. This reworking was inspired a lot by reading Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston in October, and realizing that the tone I’d been going for with my narrator hadn’t been irreverent or GenZ-y enough for the story I was trying to tell, and not grounded enough in the technologies and social media that my modern-day Catherine Morland would have access to.

I reworked the Pitch Document for the novel, now currently called “Title TBA”, and got to chapter seven during NaNo. I’ve got some thinking to do about structure for the novel, and how far into using Social Media As A Storytelling Tool I want to go with the idea, but generally speaking I’m pretty pleased with the result of the rewrites.

Partway through NaNo, it occurred to me that there was another story that my Wattpad readers were asking for, and one that would be a lot of fun to write. In A Woman of the Sea, my fictional Regency-era  Jane-Austen-analogue authoress Margaret Goodenough writes her debut novel “The Welshman’s Daughters”. As I describe this non-existent novel in A Woman of the Sea, it’s a gothic romance that’s very Elizabeth Gaskell-and-Jane Austen-esque in terms of it being a character study driven romance, with some of the fun high melodrama and gothic tone of Anne Radcliffe. And, in the world of A Woman of the Sea, it’s the first queer kiss in Classic Western Literature.

A handful of readers have asked where they can find this book, or have confessed to going to the library to ask for it, only to learn that it’s not real. I made it up.

And I thought… well, why not make it real?

So I’m working on the pitch doc and the first chapter now, to see if a) this is something I want to pursue and b) this is something that will help me break through my burn-out slump. I hope it will, but I think I still need to take time to rest before I really push into it.

And I still have the “Title TBA” rewrites to complete.

December

I published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How Do I Get An Agent?, and spent the rest of the month just trying to chill. I’ve become a bit of a reluctant reader, so I am trying to push myself to read a little each day, to remind myself why I fell in love with storytelling in the first place.

A Woman of the Sea was turned down for Paid Stories, unfortunately, because of the structure of the romance. The Stars Team explained that romance stories like this one, with one romantic partner in the first half of the book, and a different one in the second (a la Brigit Jones’ Diary) doesn’t tend to do well on Paid because readers are reluctant to shell out for a romance where they don’t meet the HEA partner until later. It’s heartbreaking to hear, because I was really hoping that this might become a viable stream of income for me. At least the team who turned it down were very kind and expressed how much they loved the story in and of itself.

But no matter – onwards and upwards!

What’s ahead for 2020

Well, I’m not sure. This has been a really, really difficult year and I have really, really struggled with trying to figure out who I am and what I want, both in life and as a writer.

Certainly, there will be lot of hard thinking about the future of my writing career. I have ideas that I love and want to pursue, but this post-firing-return-to-the-job-hunt-depression is killing my desire to create. And honestly, the fact that I’ve worked so hard for so many years and haven’t managed to get any sort of break-through or cultural foothold or ability to even really to pay my bills with this job is disheartening. I’m still paying more in marketing every year than I’m making in Royalties.

However, I have some new opportunities on the horizon – conversations happening behind closed doors, as well as Divine Paradox Films still working toward filming To A Stranger, and Alpaca vs Llama shopping The Skylark’s Song as a teens animated series. And the webseries I wrote is under consideration with a new production team, so I can keep my fingers crossed.

Who knows, perhaps the rewritten “Title TBA” might be just the thing to propel my work into a realm where I’m really earning money. Though I had originally envisioned it as the first of a series, the more I work and think on it, the more I feel like it would be best as a stand-alone. I think it would slap a lot harder if it was a one-off.

And I am genuinely liking the plot of The Welshman’s Daughters, and all the research reading and viewing I am doing to get the tone and mood of the book right (please recommend me your favourite Gothic Romances – film, TV, or books!)

But I’m not going to rush anything. It’s nice to be able to remember how to putter with a book and have no looming, razor-blade deadlines hanging over my neck.

2020 will be, I hope, a year of renewed creativity, motivation, and the year where I complete at least one of the three novel projects I’ve started.

For now, I think I’m going to go have a nap.

*

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[frederator-studios]

Meet Joel Veitch and David P. Shute, Creators of “Kid Arthur”

From the dawning of 2000 AD - when Adobe Systems first pulled Flash from the Software Stone - British animators Joel Veitch and David Shute have crafted absurd and iconic web comedy for their site, Rather Good. They are bricklayers of our Modern Age of Memes; but beyond builders, they are Wizards of the Web, gracing our desktops with such magic as the Spongmonkeys and Punk Kittens Play ‘Fell in Love With a Girl’ by the White Stripes, memes that thrived even in the dark ether of the pre-YouTube web. Frederator is honored to have aided in their maturity into long-form content, heralded by the release of their GO! Cartoon, “Kid Arthur,” which comes in at a whopping 5 minutes and 40 seconds long. Joel, David and I sat about a round table to discuss out-of-control saxophonists, dial-up modems, and wizard cats of great Magick.

So how did you each find your way into animation?

JV: We were both already in animation when we met, weren’t we David? DS: I was fairly newly graduated at the time. I studied animation at Uni - Southampton University - and was doing adverts for a while before I met Joel. JV: I started off more on the web comedy side, and drifted into animation when I began learning Flash in the early 2000s. I soon realized that my heart lay with that more than anything else. I made a couple of things that did alright and it became possible to do it for a living… so yeah, I kind of fell into animation by accident, but loved it once I’d discovered it.

How did you guys meet?

JV: I had an office, which I was sharing with some people, who were making a video which was never released. It was... all copies were ordered destroyed.(they start laughin’)  They were doing it for a client! Which turned out to be just so... completely insane. DS: It was a stop motion cartoon, and the idea was to parody something, but it was…. they gave… no I won’t say it, I won’t - (Joel is cracking up) They gave us the brief to be as offensive as possible with it. So me and another animator, we just went to town, made it. It was monstrous. It never got released, and that’s a very good thing. JV: I saw it through production and it blew my mind. Of course it never saw the light of day. But I was so completely overwhelmed by what I had witnessed being made that I asked David to come team up with me, and we’ve been a brothership ever since.

What did you guys first work on together?

JV: I still do a bit, but at the time I was doing a lot of comedy music. So we made a load of animated videos for the songs. For our own projects, that was kind of the bread and butter of what we collaborated on.

What did the comedy music entail?

JV: Well the not-full-band stuff we did as Rather Good; often just guitar and singing. But I'm also the singer of a 7 piece ska band called 7 Seconds Of Love, and we did live gigs, which was a lot of fun. We still gig, if the events are big enough—but it’s tougher now that some bandmates have moved from London.

Any legendary comedy music gig stories?

JV: If I had to choose one… it’d be the time Chaynsaw climbed the lighting rig.

We all have band names: I’m Stallion Explosion, The Bearslayer is bassist, Chaynsaw is the saxophonist, and so on. One night we were playing at quite a big venue in London; large stage, gallery seating, and there was a huge lighting rig that went all the way to the ceiling. During the song “Ninja”, Chaynsaw flipped out. He took a running jump and flew over the barriers and into the crowd, disappearing in a pile of flailing bodies. He ran through the crowd to the back and began climbing up the scaffolding of the lighting rig like some kind of crazed sax-wielding gibbon. Up and up all the way to the gods, as the crowd went crazy and we wondered whether we were about to witness his death. When he reached the gods, he climbed over onto the balcony and sprinted out of sight.  The crowd was going wild. They thought the stunt was part of the show but we had no idea what he was playing at. The song approached Chaynsaw's solo, with no sign of him. I assumed he had run off into the night, probably bellowing "CHAYNSAAAAAW!" and wielding his saxophone.  However, just at the exact moment his solo began, he came barrelling out from backstage at full speed, skidded to a halt at the front of the stage and blasted out a storming solo. The crowd went crazy: they thought it was the best bit of showmanship they’d ever seen. But it was a fluke. He'd just run headlong through random passages and stairwells backstage until he’d burst out on to the stage at the exact right moment.  It was a triumph. Nobody need ever know that it was a suicidally dangerous lunatic episode. My lips are sealed.

Yes, clearly. So Rather Good’s animations pre-date YouTube?

JV: Oh, pre-YouTube, yeah. You couldn’t really do video in those days because you didn’t have the bandwidth to do it, which was why Flash was so popular. You had to keep projects down to a couple of megabytes, very small files. Everyone was on dial-up modems.

(Rather Good’s highly educational vid about the history of the world wide web)

Wild. Was your goal to just have fun, or did you have an online audience in mind while making things?

JV: Historically they’ve been a way to entertain ourselves, at least primarily. On the basis that if you’re making something fun, that you enjoy making, then it’s more likely to be interesting and enjoyable out in the world. If you over-analyze it, you end up with something that doesn’t work very well; that’s how bad comedy gets written.

So what was it like, helping to build meme culture from the ground up… rewarding?

JV: Ha, yeah... it’s a fascinating and evolving world, isn’t it? And it’s changing so much and so fast it’s just… it’s almost difficult to put into words, the sheer magnitude of it. DS: You couldn’t really imagine this ecosystem now, 20 years ago. It would sound insane. JV: I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that the big hit was a mini track with a bunch of animated gifs of hamsters. DS: A 4 second loop of a CGI baby dancing... JV: God, and do you remember the crazy frog? DS: Oh God… yeah. JV: (laughing) It’s come a long way, and that’s a good thing. And it’s not just a technological thing is it, there’s really important stuff about the way that it’s opened up… I used to say “democratization of creativity,” which is a slightly overblown way of just saying it’s much easier for people to get stuff out in the world than it used to be. There was a system of gatekeepers in place that was very difficult to get past, until a little before YouTube. That system is bypassed now, it doesn’t really have the power anymore to dictate what makes it onto TV and hence into the popular consciousness. That’s now distributed out into the world. Which is good, although there’s a new dictator now, isn’t there? The algorithms. But that’s a different sort of thing.

(“We Like the Moon,” an ancient and powerful Rather Good meme. So revered that Quiznos used it to sell subs, in a commercial that you may, like me, vaguely remember as a fever dream from your adolescence)

Our strange new reality. Have you guys done much in the traditional kids space in the UK, with CBBC or CITV or others?

JV: We haven’t done much of anything in kids—most of what we’ve done for telly has been in the adult realm. One of our motivations for “Kid Arthur” and some other projects is getting to focus on character and narrative. Because for a long, long time, we’ve done short form - proper short form, often a minute or less long - and that’s fun, but you don’t get the opportunity to really develop character and story in those. It’s just gags. DS: That’s what’s been so fun about “Kid Arthur”: being able to actually build characters with a relationship between them, and have the space to explore that and the outer world.

So how did you guys come up with “Kid Arthur”?

JV: We’ve both always loved the Arthurian legends, fantasy worlds, Tolkien’s writing. It’s been a big part of our... cultural space, if you know what I mean? It feels like it’s been more ‘everywhere’ than ever in the last couple of years, since The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Game of Thrones and everything - everybody’s all about swords and dragons these days, which is fun. We’d talk about King Arthur and he’d pop up in conversation a lot, and we thought it’d be hilarious to put him and Mordred as kids in a modern day school. 

So is the rest of Arthur and Mordred’s world totally normal, and no one notices that these kids are summoning dragons and crazy shiz?

DS: Absolutely, they’re clueless. JV: It’s too out there for people to process. DS: I think they’re aware on some dim level, but their minds are totally unable to process or comprehend it.

(Poor, sweet, unknowing ‘Miss’)

When did you guys decide to pitch to Frederator, and what stage of development was “Kid Arthur” in?

DS: It was still pretty early on when we pitched it. JV: I met Carrie Miller in London a while ago now, at an animation event. And we talked about how we ought to pitch something to you guys. So we’d been thinking about what we could do with Frederator specifically, and “Kid Arthur” felt like the right fit.

Who do you each relate to the most between Mordred or Arthur?

DS: That’s pretty obvious isn’t it? I’m definitely Arthur. (note: David voices Arthur. Meanwhile, Joel is cracking up) JV: But this is the thing though isn’t it, part of the joy of the character, is that Arthur, he’s a kind of all-conquering heroic warrior, but he’s got Dave’s personality here, you know? He’s kinda like “Sighhhh… oh God. He’s trying to destroy me again, isn’t he”. DS: Yeaaah. JV: And I very much relate to Mordred. (Joel voices Mordred)

Oh gosh, really? How so?

JV: Well, he’s an extension of my own character to a certain extent. I’m not painting a very nice picture of myself there, am I? I mean, he’s not totally evil - he’d be gutted if he ever did destroy Arthur. That’s key to it, isn’t it? DS: Oh yeah. He’d be bereft. JV: Utterly bereft.

Have you guys been developing your ideas for a full series?

DS: We’ve talked about it quite a lot. JV: There’s a whole expanded world that we couldn’t really fit into a 5 minute short, and more characters: Guinevere - DS: Merlin - JV: Merlin as a cat! He’s the most powerful wizard in the universe. But he’s also a cat, so he tends to use his awesome power to do stuff like magic up fish heads. DS: He’s not a super intelligent cat, mind you, just a standard cat. With great magic. JV: And there’s all the knights of the round table, the witches, the Lady of the Lake. There’s this pre-existing structure from legend of all of these quests, and it’s all just ripe to be transplanted into a little town, where it exists slightly below the surface, manifesting in, you know, neighborhood parks and ponds. DS: We really love this idea that Arthur and Mordred’s battle is this ageless, epic struggle between good and evil. It’s been going on in some form or another for thousands of years, and will continue until the apocalypse. So the notion that there’s all these artifacts and characters from this enormous mythology in this modern town, largely unnoticed by everyone else—that’s exciting to us.

How has reading about Arthurian legend played a role in development?

DS: The great thing about Arthurian legend is that there are several classical texts, and they all contradict each other. Even the relationship between Arthur and Mordred shifts around quite a lot. So there’s so much within range that we can play with, and select whatever fits our world best. JV: We realized early on, that with other historical characters - say Henry VIII - there’s a very firm history of who they were, a definite character that you can research. But with these guys... you know, whether or not there was a genuine historical figure who was the genesis of these tales, when you really drill into it, it’s mystic. There’s nothing definite in this history to grab hold to - or be beholden to. The variation is part of the fun of the idea.

How do you guys usually divvy up your work?

DS: We write collaboratively; we get together and bash out words. I take the lead on the art side, things like character designs and boards. Joel more on things like sound and foley, and general managing of projects, and you know, talking to people. I’m far more happy when I’m kind of locked away and not having to talk with anyone. JV: He’s happy to not deal with actual humans.

Do you guys always pitch together, or David do you prefer to sit that out?

DS: We normally get together for that kind of thing. But Joel usually says about 20 words for my 1 word, which is fine with me. JV: We’re pretty evenly split today aren’t we David? DS: Yeah, not so bad.

What are your favorite cartoons?

JV: Battle of the Planets! DS: Yeah, we like the 80s cartoons: Ulysses 31 I really loved as a kid. It was absurdly bleak. A guy and his son drifting through deep space, encountering depressing, frightening worlds… the whole thing was a bit hopeless. Which 8 year old me really enjoyed. JV: There was a show called The Trap Door which was fantastic. Claymation show - I presume that it never aired in the states, which is a shame because it’s wonderful, truly wonderful. And Danger Mouse is a favorite, always great. DS: There’s a couple more grown up things, like Venture Bros. - JV: - Adventure Time! DS: Of course, yeah. JV: And there’s some proper adult animation being made at the moment which is lovely. We both love Archer. And Rick and Morty is obviously what it is, it’s incredible.

Any last thoughts to share with the Frederator audience?

JV: I’d just like to say how grateful we are to Frederator for helping us realize our vision for “Kid Arthur,” and exactly as we envisioned it. Working with a lot of studios can feel like you’re smashing through a brick wall with your face; and you come out of it with a product that isn’t really what you wanted to create in the first place. But “Kid Arthur” has been our baby, and we were paired with an incredible team of people to help us bring it to life. Just thinking about how much we learned from Larry (Huber, the director)... it’s incredible. It has been lovely working with Frederator. DS: Throughout the whole process, it’s been really nice. That’s so rare. JV: I wouldn’t even say rare, David! It’s unique. It’s absolutely unique. So we’re thankful.

Thanks for the great chat, Joel and David! I’ll be staying abreast of your Rather Good content - especially since I think a lot of it has been swimming around my subconscious mind for years. Excited to see what you guys do next! 

- Cooper

[permian-tropos]

Thought about how Finn and Poe are depicted in TLJ: 

I don’t think Johnson was deeply racially biased in the way people think, though I think he might have a racial bias that’s not malicious, but also worth pointing out, since I always butt heads with that bias as a white writer. 

I think Johnson wanted to give Finn and Poe solid character arcs to fit with the theme of overcoming failure, and I don’t think he wrote them as if they were Other, because I do feel somewhat familiar with what it feels like when characters are Other. I’m very alert to women being framed as Other, and in SW most droids and aliens are framed like that. also, old mentor figures can be Other, definitely maternal figures, most villains, expendable side characters, NPC-type folks in the plot who help the story along.

Stories have to be full of Others of one sort or another, and you can be Other in a sympathetic light or a negative light. You can be revered or reviled or ignored. You can be reduced to a stereotype or an archetype. And some stereotypes are more harmful than others because of their connection to real world structural oppression. 

The only characters in a story who aren’t Other are characters who get POV time -- that’s just how it works, if the movie makes you see through a character’s eyes, they want you to project onto that character for those scenes. Finn and Poe are POV characters, so they’re not fully othered. Something else is probably going on. 

I think Finn and Poe are written in ways that white men would comfortably project onto, if the characters were white men. Take Finn and his running away. It’s not as if male characters who have to learn to care about the cause are deeply disliked. Han Solo is a scoundrel with a heart of gold who spends a lot of time in ANH being reluctant to help the heroes, and then he finally shows his true goodness and saves the day. Finn being a bit jittery and focused on saving a girl he likes might seem less flattering, but think about all the awkward, foolish white male protagonists who get dunked on a bit for their flaws, but ultimately win girls’ hearts and save the day. I’m thinking Emmett from the Lego Movie as a key archetype. That’s... clearly something that white guys find relatable and enjoyable to project onto. Self-deprecating, but ultimately a power fantasy. Part of the power fantasy is watching someone who’s a bit of a loser become a hero through adversity, it makes you feel like you too could take adversity and turn it into positive change as well. And Finn isn’t even such an overstated example, but he does have a lovable-loser thing going on in TFA and TLJ. And then of course he gets to be fantastically heroic and good and brave, because we (lovable losers in the audience) would like to be that way as well.

Poe’s behavior in TLJ gives me very... uncooked Captain Kirk dough vibes. I love me some Kirk, and he’s such a passionate guy who breaks rules and defies authority whenever he thinks it’s right. And sometimes he gets it wrong, and misjudges the situation, but the narrative usually doesn’t punish him too much. And the reason for this is because Kirk has Spock and McCoy and the rest of his crew with him and he deeply trusts their advice and expertise. Spock will almost always tell Kirk to cool his tits, so Kirk feels safe getting hot-titted when he thinks it’s called for. He knows he has a limiter. That’s what makes him a good leader, he knows his shortcomings and surrounds himself with close friends who can balance those shortcomings out. He’s also a seasoned captain, wiser from having dealt with a lot of messy situations. But (forget the reboot movies lol cause I do) if you imagine a younger Kirk, you can imagine him getting all riled up about injustice and hatching one of his daring million-to-one gambits to save everyone -- and it turns out to be a bad move. It turns out he was wrong. And he gets a lesson about that, and this helps him grow into the good Kirkboy we love and respect. 

The fact that Poe wants to rush out and save the day, but needs to learn patience, is something white men can find relatable and sympathetic.

But the thing is, I can understand people seeing Finn and Poe being written in this way, and understandably perceiving it as race-blind. Johnson put all these bits of character into them, but because he’s a white male writer who does in fact want to write Finn and Poe as likable and dynamic and engaging, he seems to have written things for them that are endearing when a white male does them. 

People see the expressed interiority of Finn and Poe in The Last Jedi and get White Male vibes from it, not because they were written to be disposable or Other, but because they were given White Male interiority.

Now, arguably, Star Wars seems not to discern human races, and since so much of White Male interiority involves seeing yourself as the default and not ever questioning that status, while existing in an industrialized Westernized capitalist society, the idea that Finn and Poe would at least reflect some of that attitude kind of isn’t... entirely unrealistic? 

I say this as a woman who had a lot of weirdly externalized misogyny and mistrust of feminism as a kid because I grew up in a bubble where I was free to express my gender however I liked, and adult women made all the decisions, and had status and value, and men were kind of just there also. I didn’t actually understand the feeling of not being default, of being Other, of being secondary, and when I was first exposed to feminism I was angry because I didn’t like to be told that I was oppressed. I didn’t want to be oppressed, so don’t you dare imply it could happen! I grew up without a lot of the social pressures women get, and now I actually recognize male-privileged attitudes ingrained in myself. I feel like aspects of masculinity (but certainly not all of them!) are just the gendered appropriation of Human Default, which women would default to if they weren’t pressed out of it (and aspects of femininity are extremely Human Default too and denying them to men is very damaging to them). So Finn and Poe being written by a white man trying to make them Human Default (or at least Male Default since gender disparities do exist in SW), could come across as infused with whiteness. Also humans in SW have heavy privilege over aliens and droids so they probably would act like privileged people when you think about it......

Still, I don’t and can’t begrudge anyone (particular a person of color) who doesn’t like that, because it’s probably not relatable and it’s missing a lot of nuance and perspicacity that a writer of color would infuse the situation with, in portraying a fictional fantasy world that’s relatively blind to race to an audience in a racialized society. You have to balance both fiction and reality.

White writers sort of have to learn that. A writer wants to engage with their audience authentically, and writers can’t get that if they pretend their audience won’t be hyperalert to racial dynamics. “But I didn’t know people would have that reaction” yes you did, or you should. “But I want to live in a world where people don’t have to have that reaction since it’s coming from so much suffering and injustice” me too buddy, but one movie can’t change everything overnight. Obviously if you care about marginalized people, what you want to do is make them feel appreciated and comfortable for the space of time your movie is playing. But I understand you do also want to write in your style. All the characters you write will be coming out of your own heart, that’s inevitable. 

It feels like the “why didn’t Johnson listen to the actors” anger is because people kind of wanted to see the actors’ takes on the characters, so they didn’t have to see Rian Johnson interiority throughout all of them. Except... the thing is. If Lucasfilm really begged Johnson to write and direct their movie, he’s allowed to put Rian Johnson interiority into it. Even the characters of marginalized identities -- ultimately, wanting to project onto and empathize with characters of color is not at all bad. Johnson feels like Rose is his self insert. She’s a woman of color, and he specifically wanted KMT for the role. He felt like he could deeply relate to this character. It’s not that he identifies as an Asian-American woman, it’s that he did actually think that distinction wasn’t a barrier to relatability. (On top of that, I think Rose is written to have some backstory elements that strongly parallel her actress’s Vietnamese heritage, and I think it’s a pretty big deal and I wish more people cared about that but we’ve been brainwashed to forget the Vietnam War I guess.)

White writers do need to take care not to project too much of their own interiority onto characters of color, to the point where audiences feel like they’ve been pushed out, like they’re seeing someone who looks like them but clearly is not like them on the inside (an uncanny, unnerving effect). But at the same time, I can’t imagine writing that doesn’t come from the writer. And white writers absolutely need to project onto and relate to characters of color. It’s always going to be a mess and there’s a lot of work to do to get it right but the alternative where you’re convinced you could never relate is not at all better. 

TL;DR: Rian Johnson did indeed fall into a white male writer pitfall, but I think it’s not malicious and it’s also both problematic and potentially a good thing. Also JJ Abrams basically did the same thing it’s just that he didn’t have to write “overcome my fatal flaw” arcs for Finn and Poe.

Johnson also definitely put a lot of work into prioritizing female perspectives and female fantasies and female wish fulfillment and female POV, and I think (as a Female... or. something approximating female lol) the film is a lot better about it than any other Star Wars movie to date. Or that may be because he sat down with Carrie Fisher for hours and hours brainstorming ideas and took her suggestions seriously enough to have notebooks full of them. I imagine he should have done the same with non-white script doctor but when it came to script doctoring and a deep connection to SW, Carrie was kind of without equal.

[aion-rsa]

Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive is Built on the Shoulders of Giants

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When Brandon Sanderson wrote The Way of Kings, the first book in The Stormlight Archive series, he was ready to give up on publishing. Throwing away any ideas of what the market wanted, he decided to write something instead for himself. Now, 18 years later, Rhythm of War, the fourth book of The Stormlight Archive, marks Sanderson’s 25th novel (in addition to assorted novellas, short stories, and graphic novels), and something over seven million words of published fiction. He is, of course, not the only person who has enjoyed the epic fantasy saga.

That success was never a guarantee. Sanderson wrote 13 novels before he sold one: Elantris, in 2003. (It was published in 2005.) “The Way of Kings was number 13, the last of those unpublished books,” he recalls to Den of Geek. When trying to write for the market, he produced what he feels were some really awful novels, and beginning The Way of Kings was a way to return to the types of stories that he loved: big, chunky fantasy. “I love big epics,” he says. “I grew up on Anne McCaffrey and Robert Jordan and these really great, meaty epic fantasy series, which are my first love… I always wanted to do one of those myself.”

Rhythm of War continues the story of a war between humans and the parshmen (the singers) who are the native species of the world of Roshar. As powers of old have returned, the humans and the spren (magical spirits attuned to certain emotions or elements) have begun to reform the Radiant Knights. The singers have joined with powers to become the Fused, hosts to ancient souls in modern bodies.

The human cast includes Kaladin, a surgeon who became a soldier, benched at the beginning of the book due to his PTSD; Shallan, a woman with dissociative identity disorder who is also a master illusionist working in tandem for the heroes and a secretive spy enclave that claims to have answers to the universe; Dalinar, a Bondsmith who can heighten the abilities of others (among other gifts), and who struggles against pressures to become a high king; Navani, his wife, a queen who is more an engineer; and many others. This volume also reveals the pasts of singer sisters Eshonai and Venli as, in the present, Venli develops a secret plan for the singers’ independence, free from both human and the Fused. 

The spren are one of the most fascinating fantasy inventions featured in the series, and their role is even more important in Rhythm of War as Shallan and her partner, Adolin, try to form a treaty with the honorspren to aid in the war. The spren, especially those who have bonded with humans, are reminiscent of the daemons from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, but they are also quite unique. Sanderson was partly inspired by Japanese kami, and the idea that everything has a spirit. In the world of The Stormlight Archive, the minds of people shape the energy of the world, the spirits that embody objects and emotions. By depicting the spren, Sanderson wants readers to immediately know they are in a fantastic world.

“When people have powerful emotions, they attract spren,” Sanderson explains. “They also fulfill a writerly need: a lot of times, as writers, we’re looking for [ways to] show, don’t tell.” The spren give Sanderson, he explains, a way to reveal the emotions of his characters without using cliched expressions and depictions, while at the same time heightening the sense of the world as fantastical. “It’s also just a lot of fun to write,” Sanderson adds.

Sanderson is well known for writing strong women. (In a favorite line from Rhythm of War, one character, trying to convince Kaladin to partner up, reminds him that he likes smart girls: “Is there really anyone who doesn’t like smart girls?” Kaladin immediately replies.) Sanderson’s inclusion of prominent female characters with agency as central protagonists in his work comes from the fantasy he grew up on: Anne McCaffrey, Barbara Hambly, and Melanie Rawn. The book that made him into a reader was Hambly’s Dragonsbane, which features a woman who gave up her career in magic to raise a family—a book that gave Sanderson insight into his mother’s own choices in life. When he finished, he recalls thinking: “Wait a minute, I think I just finished a fun story about slaying a dragon, and I think I understand my mom better.… That lesson stayed with me my whole life, and my whole career.”

Sanderson strives to create authentic depictions of characters outside his own experiences. “When I write characters, I try very hard to represent that character, and anything about them, as well as if that character could write, they would represent it,” Sanderson says. He hopes that when readers find a character they identify with, they read that character and think, of Sanderson: “Wow, he must be like me!” To do this, Sanderson relies on beta readers—especially in cases like Shallan’s dissociative identity disorder (DID). “DID is represented so poorly in storytelling,” Sanderson explains. “It’s really sensationalized a lot of times. I wanted to do it right.” It took many drafts and very patient beta readers to build Shallan into the fully fleshed-out character she has become.

While Rhythm of War has many moving pieces, it’s surprisingly accessible for readers who haven’t picked up previous volumes of The Stormlight Archive, while returning fans of course will feel right at home in Sanderson’s rich fantasy world. Sanderson intends all of his books to have a quality of completeness—he works to make sure that each novel has its own identity, and that the novels don’t blend in with each other. He did not design Rhythm of War with the intent that readers would pick it up first, but he’s pleased it also works that way. “I remember doing that as a kid,” he says, “not knowing the series even was a series, or not being able to find the first one, and being like, ‘Well, I’m just going to read this one.’ There’s actually a fun to that, a piecing things together.”

Readers who have been following The Stormlight Archive since The Way of Kings was released back in 2010 have been waiting eagerly (and patiently) for each volume; it’s been just over three years since the previous installment in the series, Oathbringer, was released. But, for some Sanderson fans, the wait for the series has been even longer. “Way back when I first sold Elantris,” Sanderson remembers, “my editor … said, ‘What else do you have?’” So Sanderson submitted The Way of Kings, though it was not quite ready for publishing—something the editor and Sanderson both agreed on. “Writing a 300,000-word novel is a special skill,” he explains, “and I had not practiced that specific skill yet.”

Somehow, Amazon got word that The Way of Kings existed and put up a listing for the title. As Sanderson became better known, he told fans that asked that he did plan to return to The Way of Kings, but in the meantime, fans started to post fake reviews for it, Sanderson says, complete with doctored customer photos. One fan created a book cover with an image of Elvis and a fake blurb from Terry Goodkind. Readers continued to express their eagerness with this sort of fannish love until the real version of The Way of Kings was published in 2010. (The fake listing has since been removed, after Sanderson made sure to take “copious screenshots.”)

Between the false listing and the publication, Sanderson worked on those skills to create a true epic. Part of the experience needed for such a creative feat came from taking on the final books of The Wheel of Time series after Robert Jordan’s death.

“I usually use the metaphor that I was like Sam carrying the Ring for a little bit to finish it off,” Sanderson jokes. “The Wheel of Time experience basically forced me to go to the writing books gym and lift weights much heavier than I was accustomed to.” (Sanderson’s work on completing the series led the current-in-development Wheel of Time Amazon television series team to enlist him as a consulting producer. He has read several of the scripts and given the team advice as needed. Though he is not able to reveal much about the project, Sanderson reports: “I really have enjoyed the process of enjoying with Rafe [Judkins], the showrunner, on the television show.”)

Working on The Wheel of Time book series helped Sanderson figure out what he wanted to accomplish with The Way of Kings and the subsequent books, avoiding some of the problems he’d identified in epic fantasy. With The Stormlight Archive, Sanderson explains, “I’ve tried to make it not feel slow. I’ve tried to make it feel like each book has its own soul.” 

As for the real series’ reception: “The fans just latched onto it immediately,” Sanderson says. The series itself has so many moving parts, it’s hard to make a good elevator pitch, so Sanderson claims the series’ fans had to already trust him in order to begin. He recalls the pre-internet days when readers never knew when a new book in their favorite series was coming out; now, with the immediacy and accessibility of the internet, Sanderson tries to be upfront with his readers that each Stormlight Archive book will appear about once every three years.

To “hopefully keep fans satiated between volumes,” Sanderson and his team have also included pages of original art, and beautiful front-paper and end-paper portraits in full color in the series. “Why is there not more art in books for adults?” Sanderson wonders. “Why do kids get all the art?” Including original paintings, diagrams, and illustrations reinforces Sanderson’s deep world-building. Reprints of the earlier books in the series have sometimes even had art added as readers have asked for more detail about particular aspects of the world.

Credit: Art by Ben McSweeney © Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC

The series is planned to be ten books. “I do plan it to be two five-book arcs,” Sanderson explains. “Book five should bring us to a pretty major climactic moment in the series.” In the meantime, fans of Sanderson’s world can play in it themselves via the board game, Call to Adventure: The Stormlight Archive, which features over 150 cards with art based on the world. With so much world-building already done for The Stormlight Archive, fans may wonder if a tabletop role playing game, similar to the Mistborn Adventure Game from Crafty Games, based on another of Sanderson’s series, is in the works. “No immediate plans,” Sanderson says, “but I’m sure we’ll do one eventually.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Sanderson easily acknowledges the influences and inspirations of writers who have come before. “I have an advantage over a lot of the epic fantasy writers of my youth in that I got to read all of their books and see what was working and what wasn’t working,” he points out. But, in addition to building from other writers, Sanderson is dedicated to exploring the real world through his imaginary ones.

“Fantasy is wonderful escapism. This is why I love to read it,” he says. “But it is also a path to understanding other people. That’s what I love about fiction, and that’s what I love about fantasy in particular. It’s perhaps too lofty for me to aspire to change the world through my goofy fantasy novels, but I at least want to try to represent the world accurately so that, when you’re done with the book, if you’ve read about people different from yourself, you have come to understand them a little bit better.”

Rhythm of War is now available to buy wherever books are sold. You can find out more here.

The post Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive is Built on the Shoulders of Giants appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[tiefighters]

Ken Liu  Discusses “The Legends of Luke Skywalker” Book

For a generation in the galaxy far, far away, and for several generations here on Earth, Luke Skywalker is a character of legendary proportion: a Jedi in a time without the Jedi, the hero who saved the galaxy with his friends and his Force abilities. And just as Luke’s disappearance in his galaxy opened up a lot of speculation as to where he went and what he has been doing from the people who knew him, fans around the world also have been wondering what he’s been doing in the years after Return of the Jedi and before his appearance on Ahch-To. Filling in those gaps from a certain point of view is the newly released book The Legends of Luke Skywalker, written by the Nebula, Hugo, & Ken Liu. 

This middle grade novel is published by Disney-Lucasfilm Press as part of the Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi publishing program. StarWars.com caught up with the legendary Ken Liu, and he shared his insight into his book, the character of Luke Skywalker, and the nature of larger-than-life stories.

StarWars.com: The Legends of Luke Skywalker introduces six different tales about Luke Skywalker, passed along from one being to the next, and shared among the crew of a freighter bound for Canto Bight. What is it about Luke Skywalker that makes him more than just a hero, but a figure of legend?

Ken Liu: Just listen to his name! How can you possibly not be a figure of legend when your name is larger-than-life?

Fantasy logic aside, Luke is the perfect mythic figure onto which we in the audience are free to project our hopes and fears. In the films, he walks a fine narrative line between destiny and free choice, and that is the narrow ledge on which all of us struggle as we construct and invent the plot of our own lives. It’s human nature to yearn for our actions both to be born of our own agency and to have meaning in a grand design, and that yearning is the rich soil in which legends and myths flourish.

In our world, as the deeds of famous men and women are distorted, simplified, and exaggerated into bare, impressionistic outlines, we fill them in with vivid colors according to our own understanding of the human condition and our own needs for the right story. The same person may be seen as hero or villain, as martyr or hypocrite, depending on who is doing the seeing and what colors are in their Crayola box.

As it is in our universe, so it is in the galaxy far, far away.

StarWars.com: How does the telling and retelling of a tale change the nature of a story, and how does that play out in your book?

Ken Liu: It’s worth recalling that the Star Wars we’ve come to know and love isn’t a single vision, but a collection of different visions in time and place.

Most fans will remember that Lucas himself said that the theatrical releases of the original trilogy were only [a fraction of his original vision]. He had a chance to create the Special Edition versions of the films later, which could be viewed as a re-telling of the story of the original trilogy.

Lucas certainly had an opinion on which version was definitive, but that isn’t necessarily the final word in fandom. There have been so many think pieces about the changes that I need not add to the heat and noise, but I do think that as Star Wars fans, understanding that stories change with each retelling comes to us as second nature.

I’ll use myself as an example. My initial exposure to the Star Wars saga came not from the films at all, but from the Chinese translation of the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back, which was the first science fiction fantasy novel I ever read. Back then, as a kid in China, I didn’t have access to the films, and so I had to flesh out the descriptions on the page with my own imagination. Thus, later, when I finally got to the see the films (and in a different language than the translation I had read), I had the perhaps uncommon experience of seeing the original as a kind of “re-telling” of a story I already loved in a very different form.

Perhaps this isn’t as unusual as it sounds. Today, many fans new to Star Wars see the original trilogy only after they already know the story in detail and can even quote famous lines from it. So, like any other classic that has become part of the fabric of our culture (e.g., Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet), new fans only get to experience the original as a kind of re-telling.

Bonus digression: check out this collection of Star Wars posters from around the world to see how the story is transformed in each poster’s “re-telling.”

The point isn’t to argue over which version of the story is more “definitive” or “truer” — I find it far more interesting to think about how stories change as they’re re-told and re-understood. In fact, even viewing the exact same film a second time when we’re 48 will give us very different feelings and reflections as compared to our first viewing when we were eight — it’s a re-telling in which the story changes because the listener has changed.

I love thinking about how different versions of the same story help to illuminate the fact that the storyteller is inseparable from the story and also from the audience.

This dynamic plays out multiple times in Legends as the same events are recounted by different narrators and as Luke himself is refracted into a multitude of Lukes. Every storyteller has an agenda, as does every listener. In that narrative instability we discover the grandness and richness of the Star Wars universe itself — a galaxy with only one story is not a galaxy I want to live in.

StarWars.com: The main legends all involve a supposed first-hand encounter with Luke Skywalker from some rather unique narrators: a conspiracy theorist, an Imperial serving at the Battle of Jakku, a construction droid reprogrammed into being a mine overseer, and more. How did you create these characters and inform their points of view?

Ken Liu: One of the things about Star Wars that has impressed me the most is the lived-in feeling of the universe: scuffed armor, scorched hulls, jury-rigged engines. Every object has a history behind it, and every character has a backstory.

I wanted to write a book that honors that aspect of Star Wars. The galaxy is a large place, and it needs to feel that way. I worked hard to construct distinct points of view that were interesting to me and also hinted at the full spectrum of disagreements and opinions. Then I dug deep in research to flesh out their backstories to build solid foundations for how they’d come to hold the views of Luke that they did. It was such a joy to delve deeply into a universe I’ve loved all my life and to bring to life characters I wanted to get to know.

Without giving away spoilers, I do want to caution the reader against assuming that any of the Luke-like figures they encounter in the book is in fact Luke Skywalker. Sometimes we retell legends not just by recounting the stories, but by emulating their heroes.

StarWars.com: What opportunities and challenges are there to creating not just one but a whole series of different stories that fit into the realm of tall tales, campfire stories, or urban legends within Star Wars?

Ken Liu: Writing a series of stories linked together by a framing story poses a special challenge in that I believe in a book like this, the sum must be greater than the parts. I had to make sure that the different levels of narration and the disparate stories work together as a whole to tell a grander myth about Luke that the individual stories cannot. I had to do a great deal of planning, sequencing, and careful adjustment of the individual tales to make this meta-narrative work.

And of course, writing a book like this is just plain fun. Because the narrators are assumed to be unreliable (but are they really?), I can do all sorts of things that would not be possible otherwise. I could question consensus and pose outrageous speculation. It gave me a chance to explore how legends and myths can grow around a kernel of facts in one of the richest narrative universes ever created by the human imagination.

StarWars.com: Who are some of your favorite characters in this book and what makes them stand out for you?

Ken Liu: I love Redy, the conspiracy theorist. She dedicates her considerable intellectual powers to motivated reasoning to defend a story that fits her worldview. While the reader is free to dismiss Redy, I think we all have a bit of Redy in us — it’s just much harder know when the inner Redy is spinning her tales.

I also love Aya-Glon, a girl from a world covered in water. She and a mysterious visitor to her world challenge each other’s deepest held beliefs while also learning from each other. Some of my most cherished friendships have been like that.

StarWars.com: You also recently wrote “The Sith of Datawork” in the New York Times-bestselling From a Certain Point of View anthology. What made you want to explore the bureaucratic side of the Imperial Navy?

Ken Liu: As a law student, I had a particular interest in administrative law, and after that I worked for years as a corporate lawyer, having to deal with the government often. Bureaucracy, as a technology of organization and collective decision-making, is one of the crown jewels of human intellect.

I simply could not resist the chance of portraying the Imperial bureaucracy at work and the exciting stories hidden behind the stacks of datapads being pushed around.

StarWars.com: How does writing Star Wars compare to writing your own fiction? For readers who enjoy your style in The Legends of Luke Skywalker, what other of your works would you recommend?

Ken Liu: With my own fiction, I get to make all the decisions, but I do have to create everything out of my imagination. There are no reference books or experts to consult, and I’m always forging into terra incognita. It is exhilarating to work that way, but can also be very lonely.

With Star Wars, I’m working in a beloved universe that has been built up over the years by many legendary creators, and to be able to stand on their shoulders and participate in this joint storytelling effort is a dream come true. Moreover, I’m celebrating my love for Star Wars with hundreds of millions of fans around the world. It’s also a thrilling experience, but feels a bit like exercising different creative muscles.

If readers enjoy my work in Legends, they may also like my silkpunk epic fantasy series, “The Dandelion Dynasty” (The Grace of Kings and The Wall of Storms), which also plays with the idea of legendary history, fantastical machines, and magical creatures. They may also want to check out my collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, which features short fiction in a variety of genres like hard sci-fi, magic realism, cyberpunk noir, and near-future thriller.

StarWars.com: What do Luke Skywalker and Star Wars mean to you?

Ken Liu: Star Wars may be the closest thing we have to a modern mythology. Its characters, images, vehicles, ideas, and magic have become a language of metaphors that we invoke in discussing everything from politics to baseball. As new stories are told in the Star Wars universe, the mythology grows and expands to better reflect our society and to comment upon our strides into the unknown future.

Just as Luke grows as a hero in his journey, I’ve also grown as a writer and as a human being in the years since I first met him. With this book, I hope that fans of Star Wars of all ages and backgrounds can come to appreciate the many facets of Luke, and I’m especially looking forward to introducing my daughters to this grand saga.

The Legends of Luke Skywalker is available in hardcover and as an ebook from Disney-Lucasfilm Press, with illustrations by J. G. Jones and as an audiobook narrated by January LaVoy from Penguin Random House Audio.

[outlyingthoughts]

My used-to-be treasured garden: July 19.

Sometimes I wonder if people know how iconic they appear to me. Attitudes and shrugs, I admire in people the things I know I’ll never be. There is around me a sort of rough refinement that I’ll never reach and hundreds of admirative letters I have write to the humans I’m inspired by.

I’m the opposite and come as a contradiction to my environment. The people I write about all live on this thin equilibrium in a seemingly perfect messiness that only “cool kids” in movies have, yet they are crude and hold stronger personalities, like knives ready to cut your throat they have diverse and personal well calibrated comebacks. Each and every single one of them has a sharp sense of their onion-like layers, who they are and what they stand for. Some root for justice, some success, others for nothing but it’s a lovable nihilism they convey: charming and fearless carelessness, probably just a facade that my naive perception is reluctant to acknowledge.

And yet shy and intimidated thus loud and uncomfortable, I struggle to escape the natural mess that I am, becoming over the course of my teenager years a rigid and plain thing you won’t dwell over.

I used to be convinced that there were hidden gems in this garden I used to treasure. Now seemingly unkept, only a tiny part, like a suburban backyard is the survivor of my self-realization. The more time flies by, the more the myriads of luscious greenery I used to think I sheltered in my skull disappear like the Amazonian forest: cut short as the world goes on and I can’t regenerate and adapt my growth and vision to its rate. I have a diary where I lay and leave all my thoughts, it’s a mirror of my brain and the ruins of my treasured garden where dozens of flowers, my friends, bloom and perfume my perception of the world with their various essences, keeping alive the small amount of wonders left in me.

In this thoughtful heaven, there are clouds I can’t repress. Dark cumulonimbus chasing my sunny trust in everything that I take for granted, there is you, you-s and other them, the variables that mingle between us, wavering my expectations and confidence: they determine how I see you, see us. Over here, there are also overcast nightmares and wet dreams that make me lose my certitudes: how do I see you when my eyes are closed and my consciousness is in bed? Earlier this week, I dreamt of you; we held on tight like we twice did before, dancing in a bar under red flashing lights, my grip on your hair feeling as natural it is seems ridiculous now awake.

They say dreaming of making out in public can be a symbolism of wanting to be forthright and open to our feelings with someone but we haven’t talked in months and you hardly ever cross the conscious part of my mind. Yet now that my subconscience made you emerge, you linger in my thoughts and while I know I don’t want you anymore I still wonder what my sleepy fantasy meant.

Whether or not I’ve been burying you in a lost mental cemetery with my repressed feelings or if you’re like the other you-s irrelevant but still well polished in an alcove of the hall of You-s: that is the main question. Ashamed of how I let you swerve with my expectations, there is a limited amount of uncertainty and bullshit my self-esteem can take. By making me, despite yourself, believe just the time of a hibernal interlude in a concept I’ve never put my faith in, you swept me off my feet for a few weeks.

The big word with a capital L, you let me think I’d eventually fall in it truly, deeply, madly but mainly coordinately for the first time. You made me trust that I had time and that it’d come naturally, not with you nor for you, but that one day I’d eventually know what loving means.

In the valleys of my cortex, there are other you-s, I see you in social media statistics and you get me to dwell over instagram algorithms, wondering why you’re ranking upwards and whose fault it is. Deep in my mental cacophonies, there are also back-skin rolls and anxious memory snapshots from my latest pause in front of a mirror, witnesses of how summertime sadness makes swell out of myself into an even more self conscious monster. Hidden under the bed of my gray matter, what-ifs and how-comes, skeptical questionings of how on earth can the people that aren’t blood related to me endure my presence, attach affection and slap compliments (on)to my being; in my matchless condition, there is the designed ugly fat friend character but otherwise nothing cinematic relates to how unworthy the little cells trapped in my bony box feel.

Prone to harsh comparison in the silence of my lonely moments, there are truths I’ll never allow to slip of out the edge of my mouth, violent waves of self incrimination and thousands of accusations I throw at you all while I fight for salty beans to not glide down. What is there to appreciate in my physical envelop or vaporous persona and worst, why would you all lie?

Sometimes I dive deep into the lake of my doubts and ended up lost in a Truman Show maze. My almost-ironic existence on the line, is it all real or do you fake care? How will I know for sure that you feel and fear as I do, share and care the way I won’t allow myself to as long as my confused suspicions persist ? The lack of answer is an authoritarian source of irresolvable yet fully aware inhibitions. In those incoherent and fearful hours of the night, I take a strong hold onto my keyboard and cry my insecurities into a pointless blog with yet another set of soon-to-be-given-up dreams. There are snores and the mechanical silence of the AC chilling me to my bone, an almost empty cup of green tea and 636 people I can overload with untimely and uninteresting social media updates. I overpost with my subconscience, knowing damn well that I’ll delete half of it few hours later: it’s a simple scream in my era’s ever-connected void, not meant to echo, I might just want you to hear me out (felt depressed might delete l8er).

The only thing I used to think was great about me were my taste and ideas. Yet the hundreds storylines of half pregnant projects of movie direction and essays in my notes, pseudo philias more like stillborn loves for photography, cinematography, too popular and wanna be alternative forms of visual arts suggest that all that I thought made me special are mere reflections of the determinism of my upbringing, social background and environment. Shallow assumptions I made about artistic enlightenment and things I’ll probably never master nor understand are wild fires in my garden, they burn the virtual confidence away leaving me a desolated valley of ashes and like Ms Wilson, I’m scared of dying while seeking for an iconic gateway.

I used to think that I wrote well because I had always been told so, but lately I’ve been trying to write fictions and somehow it seems impossible for my self-centered being to write anything without identifying some of my traits in the characters I’ve created. Flawed and irregular, my writing relates more to a ‘teenage in crisis” diary material rather than the “aspirational twenty-something woman’s” essays I devour. But writing this, I see how even my standards and aims are distorted: I dream in big white and glossy capital letters over a blue background of growth and becoming. With Michelle Obama as my personal role model and a bunch of other fifty something black women sipping their successes away in a corner of my mental garden, I shouldn’t be surprised to feel unworthy when I try to gauge where my life is at.

To think that it took me nineteen years to realize how much of an obnoxious fraud I can be, yet still hoping to be more without truly acknowledging that I set the bar higher than I could ever reach. There are few things I wish to say and tiny words I need to hear get me through the coming storm of sickening sadness and ramping panic. Violent power seizures in my brain by toxic parts of myself, I’d rather have them shut out like you from my dreams. There is nothing I can do but to post and scroll some more throughout my supposed-to-be stress-free summer, or maybe to overthink and dramatize over my insecurities. I’ll just lay in the grass of my homie mental garden, praying for the forty remaining days of summer to pass by as fast as they can because a nerve wracking hurricane is heading to my used-to-be paradise and I’m not sure my soul can resist such bad weather again.

[jagaimogoshujinsama]

rambling about shin men and hyu/kan. its long and self indulgent but if ur curious where my brains been at recently here it is

ive been in an out of a couple fandom interests recently, im still following new shin chan episodes closely (and i’ll get back to subbing some eps probably, at some point)...

anyway the past couple weeks i got, weirdly, super into hyu and kan as a ship. even though theres not a TON of content to work off, and also theyre ostensibly a het ship which can turn me off (and did at first, when i first realized kan is a ~secret girl~, in fact i have my reaction in writing

but then i gave shin men more of a chance and rly grew to appreciate all of the characters and.. the thing as a concept, and BOY!! i love kan a lot, like a heck of a lot. and since shes a girl who deliberately takes on a lot of masculine attributes its very easy to read her as genderqueer or transmasculine or even a trans dude straight up - though as a demi...gender?? person myself i like reading her as Soft Transmasc, because projecting onto cute little cartoon ppl is my favorite thing to do

so one of my main questions when i encountered this series was: who came up with this and why? what IS shin-men? this post will be me trying to explain it to myself:

shin-men was a concurrently-running anime AND manga series created in 2010 to celebrate the 20th year anniversary of shin-chan. the anime is obviously more well known, but the manga chapters tell the stories quite a bit differently and provide some more backstory - i own the first two volumes with the third on the way. the anime is awesome because it was seemingly spearheaded by Masaaki Yuasa (the kaiba dude), and as soon as I saw the first episode i assumed Shin-Men was his brainchild from start to finish. i’m not sure EXACTLY how much was his creation, conceptually speaking, but it is true that he finalized designs and a lot of basic concepts for the characters.  (parabon is straight up hyo hyo!)

(from masaaki yuasa’s super huge sketchbook, which runs in the 40-50 dollar range. let me know if you find it cheaper anywhere ill accept a used copy with heavy spaghetti stains)

yuasa boarded the first five episodes of shin-men, and a subsequent 8 episodes were released with different boarders (primarily yuji mutou, who’s been a heavy hitter on shin-chan since 1998). yuasa’s 5 episodes are beautiful - i mean look at this

yuasa always brings an otherworldly, dreamlike quality to whatever story he’s telling. on shin chan he generally seemed to prefer fun AUs and outlandish stories about buriburi zaemon that would allow him to invent colorful new settings and costumes.

that’s what’s so refreshing about shin-men - it’s the first time the show completely abandons its core cast of characters and focuses on NEW ones, in a universe with different rules. except, just kidding, because shinnosuke is still the main character, he’s just red now and called gou. so even while shin-men is TECHNICALLY breaking the fundamental rule of shin-chan - that shin is the main character who is in every single episode no matter what - it’s still abiding by it, and it still feels like shin-chan. that’s not criticism, though - i like the various alt-universe appearances of shin-chan characters in the shin-men universe. my favorite is matsuzaka, who is called “matsuzakaroni”, is STILL a kindergarten teacher even in this very alien universe (and despite the fact that she, i think, hates it?), and most uncannily of all, gets hit on by gou?? also gou is an adult i think, in this universe’s rules, he’s just really short like all of the other shin-men who are also adults?? i mean, i THINK? why does nobody in universe ever seem to mention how tiny these apparent grown-ups ar

anyway i’m not an expert on shin-men. despite my efforts i don’t really understand exactly where it came from or where gou’s ears are

i hope some day someone will create really good english subs of it, though i realize that’ll be a serious effort since yuasa’s episodes ABOUND with onscreen text - fuck, just imagine editing the moving gossip clouds on botswanawana to have english text. how would you even do that.

but i do wanna talk about kan a little and why shes cool thats the topic of this post

kan akaluislar (thats her last name..) is one of the 5 shin-men, superheroes with elemental powers who all look like a 5 year old named shinnosuke nohara from another universe, but don’t think too much about that. kan’s the only one who doesn’t actually have a superpower - she’s the Iron Man of the group, like, literally she’s tony stark, she’s the super wealthy and successful president of a major automobile company and rules the school in her home country, Detahoit. (which is maybe a pun on detroit? i’m not sure what’s up with that name)

anyway in addition to being iron man she’s also Transformers and Fullmetal Alchemist, she’s all three of those guys. she turns into a car a lot and transports her teammates everywhere. she also OWNS a car and drives it around when she’s not being a secret car superhero. is that bitterly tragic, or does kan secretly PREFER to be the car? is that her darkest fantasy? to be a full time car instead of a car-driving ceo? that is my headcanon

kan guards the fact that she’s female from the group, convinced they’d treat her differently. specifically, she’s convinced gou and nyoki would hit on her (confirmed), sui would bitch her out for not having a proper skin care regimen (that’s sui’s big thing, by the way, is that he’s a bitchy youtube beauty vlogger), and - worst of all - hyu would kick her out, since girls can’t fight.

...which seems like a pessimistic view of hyu. hyu is the wind elemental in the group - he’s buff and a little dopey but kind hearted and sweet, the noble hero type. also a bit of a spoiled prince.

each member of shin-men gets a yuasa episode dedicated to them, and hyu’s episode - his main arc, really - centers on his love for kan, which he keeps secret, despite the powerful curiosity of his country’s gossipy citizens.

what interests me is the disparate ways the anime and manga handle this plot thread. the anime treats hyu’s crush very earnestly, maintaining an undercurrent of quiet affection from him that appears in the majority of its episodes. the manga, however, emphasizes kan’s disinterest in romantic advances from both gou AND hyu, then practically drops the topic of hyu’s crush. it doesn’t exactly defy or contradict the relationship they have in the anime, however -- but it makes me sad, because hyu’s crush on kan is extremely cute and endearing. (as a sidenote, gou’s thing for kan is also pretty  cute, but it only exists in the manga, and, well - it’s not really a /romantic/ crush.

the shin-men manga makes a lot of different choices to the anime, and since the two were released concurrently i have no idea which “version” of any one story was the “original” - and in some cases i’m sure there isn’t an “original” version of a story, just two different ones. sometimes i really prefer the anime’s decisions (not drawing eyelashes on kan) and other times i’m... not sure what to think (the manga chapter with pimawari does NOT focus on kan, so did the anime decide to highlight kan’s relationship with pimawari because... kan’s a girl?? did they really do that? am i over thinking this?)

the manga does a GREAT job of fleshing out kan, though, even though it does so by torturing her, endlessly. she gets trapped inside of a washing machine. then has to use up all her fuel exploding out of the washing machine. the good news is, kan can repair washing machines, we learn this in episode 5 of the anime.

but be it manga OR anime, kan and hyu frequently wind up as partners who work well together, and its understandable. kan and hyu have private lives that mirror each other, both of them being high-profile and wealthy, pressured (kan by her conniving older sisters, hyu by his palace’s grand chamberlain) to settle down when neither of them is particularly interested, both preferring the life of a superhero. their private lives seem lonely and neither of them has any friends outside of shin-men. but within shin-men they team up frequently, and (being natural leaders) the two of them tend to take charge and stand out as The Responsible Ones.

(pointing = leadership)

this is what sells me on them as a couple - that they have this core of collaboration and mutual care in their superhero lives, which could build into a supportive friendship in their personal lives.

i very much love that hyu has a crush on kan despite thinking kan is a guy. that angle never comes up in the anime, though its lightly touched in the manga - and yuasa explicitly addresses it in his earliest notes. to quote,

“kan (iron shinnosuke) is the only girl within shin-men. since only men can be shin-men, she wears an iron suit to conceal the fact that she's female from everyone. and since she doesn't have a superpower, she relies on the power of her suit. hyu (wind shinnosuke) secretly likes kan but keeps thinking things like "could it be that i actually swing that way.." (lol). eventually, he's the only one who knows about her true self, but hides it from everyone so it won't be known.”

so, kan’s expectation of how hyu would react, having a sexist freakout and banning her from battle? apparently not representative of reality. which is good news because, even if kan doesnt want a love connection, she DESPERATELY needs a friend whom she doesnt feel the need to hide her private life from.

and at th end of the day thats what makes me happy: the idea that hyu can be this friend to kan, and they just chill out together, smoke a bong, get their truant son gou to cook them some curry, consolidate oil and wind technology to make both of their countries more sustainable and energy efficient, kiss etc.

im so curious if vol3 of the manga will give me any further insight.. i doubt it but im excited anyway

[candidateofloyalty]

2019 Fic Retrospective

I saw a number of people doing this, and since I’m always up for talking about my own writing, I decided to imitate them. Admittedly, I’m a bit late, but since I didn’t have computer access for a decent part of this week I think it’s justified.

Apparently I wrote 55k words of fic this year? Given that I spent half the year out of the country, that is higher than I expected. I guess suddenly allowing a podcast to become my entire personality is a powerful motivator.

1/31

The Clock Strikes Midnight, Fire Emblem Echoes, 3.5k words

The prince is throwing a ball to find a spouse, and Faye just knows that this is her chance to make her dreams come true. There's no time for her to worry about the messenger who brought her the news, not when she can finally live out her fairytale.

My birthday gift for star, this time only posted one day after their birthday. Someday I will figure out this timing thing. They wanted a Cinderella AU, and as someone who read approximately 5 million fractured fairytale novels in high school, I had an immediate idea of where I wanted to take the plot. I’m pretty pleased with how this one came out, especially since I never actually played Echoes. It’s also one of my rare fics where the title isn’t a song lyric.

2/14

Sacred Simplicity, Dangan Ronpa, 900 words

Sakura and Aoi meet up for their weekly donut date, but Sakura's mind is elsewhere.

I can’t believe it took a fic exchange to get me to write Sakuraoi. The request was cute and I had a good time, though. I’m always a fan of the concept of Hope’s Peak practical exams. The whole premise of the franchise is that these kids have crazy skills, so let them use them.

3/3

My Fantasies from Long Ago, Persona 4, 5.2k words

While walking home from work, Yosuke is hit on the head by a mysterious cat-dog-thing. This is the least weird thing that happens to him over the course of the next 24 hours.

Apparently I had a lot of outside sources of inspiration this year. I guess that’s what all fanfic is, but even so. This AU is from kawaii-bunny-mel, and is ridiculously fun to write. This one sticks pretty close to the source material, since I intended it as an introduction to the AU. I wrote most of it on trains while cross-referencing the original episode. As it turns out, writing is much faster when you don’t have to worry about pacing or coming up with original events.

5/4

The Present You's Daydreams, Persona 4, 7.2k words

Yosuke's been doing magical girl temp work for about a month, and it's pretty much the best thing that's ever happened to him, even if it does mean having a weird bear roommate. Then Souji invites him to a party, and Yosuke has to face something even scarier than magical enemies: social interaction.

The second part of the BAPC AU, and the one where I went off and did my own thing. As much as I love the source material, I wanted to fit the rest of the IT in somewhere, and there are like 6 characters in the entirety of BAPC. Really, though, a significant amount of this fic was an excuse to have Yosuke use his customer-service voice on a dragon. I’d also meant for this to be the one where they got together, or at least showed mutual interest, and then Yosuke went and made things awkward. I don’t know what I expected. I got to write Hamuko being cryptic at Souji, though, which was even better.

5/19

Dazzling Blue Sky on the Window, Persona 3, 3.9k words

After Erebus, Metis is prepared to vanish, but Igor suggests another option.

This one was my birthday present to myself. You might wonder what that means when all of my fic is incredibly self-indulgent to begin with, and the answer is merging two universes and saving my favorite minor character in the process. It was only after the fact that I realized how much projection was involved. It’s fine.

6/16

Bright-Eyed, Tireless One, The Adventure Zone, 2.2k words

Minerva is here, physically present, and Duck's so glad to see her. The only question is what to do with her. They've got enough people hidden in the Amnesty Lodge basement as it is. (Immediately post Episode 28)

I caught up to Amnesty right after episode 28 was released, which is what we in the writing business call good timing. I immediately wrote this in a haze of love for Minerva and have not thought about it since. I think episode 30 confirms it as canon, though.

7/8

Not So Nec-Romantic, Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun, 1.7k words

Nene's been studying to join the Healers' Guild for years, and it's finally time for her admissions test. It doesn't quite go as planned.

Star egged me on to write this and then wrote their own, funnier take on an RPG AU, which would have been rude if it weren’t for the fact that I got to read the better fic without having to write it. My favorite part of this fic is Mitsuba and Kou charging in from their epic fantasy quest without noticing that they’ve landing in the middle of a comedy of errors. I kind of want to write what they were actually up to but also it’s funnier this way.

8/25

Open Seas and Ways Of Life I've Forgotten, Friends at the Table, 3.5k words

Cass is adjusting just fine to life on their own, thank you.

They'd be doing even better if their new teammate wasn't so eerily reminiscent of their sibling, but that's all right. They're definitely coping.

And here we hit the fatt tipping point of my year. The Kingdom Game was probably the point where I fully devoted myself to this show, and a large part of that was the ability to conspiracy-board all of Sokrates’ influences on Cass’ personality. I have not stopped thinking about the Pelagios siblings since.

9/29

Not the Only Ones Pretending, Friends at the Table, 1.2k words

It sounds so nice, in theory. Mako's just running into an old friend while going out for fried chicken. But even though the Chime has broken up, two of them in the same place can still throw the simplest of missions into chaos.

I wrote this in an hour after listening to the penultimate episode of Counter/weight because the Orth-Mako scene ended right where things got good, to my mind. I just wanted to know more about how the Chime interacted after the timeskip. This also marks the start of me defaulting to Mako’s POV in every other Counter/weight fic I write.

10/14

A Magic That Won't Go Cold, Friends at the Table, 4.5k words

Jacqui doesn't normally like being sent on bodyguard jobs, but then, she's not normally working for Joypark darling Aria Joie.

I’ll just come up with a fun Jacria AU to think about in my spare time, I thought to myself. There’s a lot to explore with an Aria who never left Joypark. I can come up with some neat bullet points and it will be a good time. Then I started connecting the bullet points and at that point I had an entire outline for a fic. It’s what they deserve.

10/18

Questions Ricochet Like Broken Satellites, Friends at the Table, 2k words

Kobus' entire life had been pointless, but for once, they could see exactly what they needed to do. Then Vicuna pulled them out of Liberty and Grace.

I could not tell you why I latched onto Kobus so hard, but that didn’t stop me from doubling the size of their ao3 tag in a month. This fic ended up pretty depressing, which is ironic since the whole point was to give them a happier ending than they got in canon, but at least they’re alive at the end of it.

11/4

Detect My Sudden Existence on Your Sonar, Friends at the Table, 3.1k words

AuDy didn't intend for the rest of the Chime to move in with them. They didn't object when it happened, though.

I had a lot of trouble trying to write from AuDy’s perspective but I’m pleased with the end result. Maybe next I’ll figure out how to do pacing and/or tonal consistency. I do like the Cass stuff at the end but I think my favorite scene from this fic is everyone helping Aria unpack her stuff and being goofy.

11/11

Telling Dreams from One Another, Friends at the Table, 1.3k words

Mako shows up on Kobus' doorstep holding a Divine, and doesn't even have the decency to bring fried chicken.

This started because I kept thinking about how Kobus’ form of Ambition would have been Faith and how close that comes to Loyalty, and then the more I wrote the more I liked the dynamic between Kobus and the younger Makos. A lot of it can be summed up as Mako being the mid-twenties upperclassman who looks at the freshman and goes “oh look, a baby” much to the freshman’s annoyance, except instead of being in college they’re both secret agents raised as weapons since they can remember. It isn’t addressed in the fic but I imagine this ends with Kobus following Mako back to Kesh and ending up with eight identical older siblings.

11/24

Find Out What Broke Me Soon Enough, Friends at the Table, 1.9k words

Kobus is still reeling from their failed attack on Grace, but when Aria Joie asks for their help, they can't think of a good reason to refuse.

Continuing the theme of “what if Kobus had friends,” I like the idea of Aria being worried about Righteousness consuming her and going to the one person she knows of who’s successfully stepped away from a Divine. Like the last fic in the series, I tried very hard to give Kobus a happy ending and they categorically refused. As it turns out, when you’ve been raised to see yourself as a sacrifice for the greater good, it’s hard to find other ways to make a difference, and Aria doesn’t know them well enough to push it. One day I will find the right combination of characters and circumstances to let Kobus rest.

12/7

Take Our Time 'Cause It Feels Like We're Dying, Friends at the Table, 1.7k words

When Cass coughed up the first flower petal, all they could do was stare at it in disbelief.

Yes, I know, hanahaki. I am surprised at myself too. I was just thinking about what it would take to get me invested in hanahaki and because of who I am as a person my brain immediately applied that to Counter/weight. I know where I’m going with it but I want to finish F&M before continuing, so keep an eye out maybe in February. Also, doing this retrospective made me realize that this is the second time I’ve used a line from this song as a title for a Counter/weight fic. Whoops.

12/17

The Movements of My Mind, Friends at the Table, 1k words

On his way back to Auniq for the negotiations, Throndir stops by the cave where he met Kindrali.

My first non Counter/weight fatt fic, and once again it is introspection about a Dre character, because without realizing it I ended up with a favorite player. I just like coming up with in-universe explanations for things that were probably mistakes on their part, and I’m always interested in how the Kindrali connection works. Even if I am now incapable of thinking of Kindrali without going “I wonder what day he remembers??”

12/25

Fantasy and Microchips, Friends at the Table, 9.2k words

Five times Mako hacks things accidentally because of Cass, and one time it's intentional.

The year ended as it began, with me taking someone else’s AU and writing a fic about it. In this case, it’s a comic done by drowzydruzy on twitter. I looked at it, went “that’s pretty funny, maybe I could write a fic about it,” and then two chapters in I realized how to exploit it for angst and pretty much didn’t stop. The trickiest part so far has been making Rigor references without getting too heavy-handed. I’m halfway through writing the last chapter now, so naturally I’m procrastinating by doing this meme. It’s actually a meta-narrative about defeating Rigor by not being too beholden to your own projects, or something.

[omglr]

trollercoaster

You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

You both like socialism, feminism, and feminist.

You: hi

Stranger: Abortion is the literal definition of the slippery slope. First they say aborting a fetus is okay and them they move onto late term abortions and everyone is accepting it! Soon they’ll say aborting babies is okay and then say that a mother has the right to abort her teenage sons. Soon, they’ll be aborting all adult men because the end goal of feminism is genocide. That’s why I call them feminazis, because they literally advocate for eugenics and the murder of an oppressed group that gets blamed for everything (men)

You: ha

You: hey dude

Stranger: feminazis are cancer

Stranger: hi

Stranger: the war on masculinity is also a slippery slope

You: ha

Stranger: first destroy gender norms and patriarchy

Stranger: then they want to destroy men

You: dang you need some better boots boy

Stranger: feminists are our oppressors

You: like, these ideas aren't getting much traction with me

Stranger: are you a feminazi?

You: maybe you just live in a rainy hilly area

Stranger: shut up bitch

Stranger: im a man

You: yeah dude, it seems like you've got it rough

Stranger: why are feminists so mean?

Stranger: what did i ever do to them?

You: like, those are some wacky problems that aren't really hurting you

Stranger: yeah they are its a slippery slope

Stranger: they’re going to kill all of us

You: sliperry slopes are logical falacies boy

Stranger: no

Stranger: its the truth

Stranger: birth control is a gateway drug to murdering all men

You: dude, the world is collapsing cause of capitalism

You: not ladies

Stranger: lol are you a commie

You: yeah dude

You: and i hate nazis

Stranger: good for you. you should hate feminists

Stranger: they are literally fascists

You: ha

You: na dude, i'm like more into hating actual facists

Stranger: they are fascist, they want to take away our free speech

You: lol

Stranger: and they dont want our men to just be men

Stranger: feminazis are misandrists

You: you must be trollin boy

You: you sound histarical

Stranger: im not a troll

You: well that's just sad then

Stranger: and lol im hysterical?

Stranger: well you’re a woman

Stranger: so you’re even more hysterical

Stranger: are you on your period?

You: lol

You: yeah bro

Stranger: lol!

You: and you're the one raggin' on me

Stranger: you’re a man hater, all feminazis are

You: lol

Stranger: im just defending masculinity

You: its pretty offputing look honestly

You: you ever get head?

Stranger: no because i am a mgtow who doesnt need females in my life!

You: have you considered going your way into oncoming traffic?

Stranger: lol real men commit suicide the right way only girls attention whore like that

You: or joining the navy ?

Stranger: i once shot myself in the head

Stranger: twice

Stranger: didnt even die

You: tyler durden was gay

Stranger: lol @ all the girls who overdose or walk into traffic

Stranger: just looking for attention

Stranger: whos tyler durden?

You: yeah attentions seakers are pathetic

You: you're tyler durden

Stranger: no?

Stranger: im a real man

You: fight me then

Stranger: lol i dont hit women

Stranger: despite me being a mgtow i still care about chivalry

You: i'm not a woman

You: i'm you

Stranger: the f??

You: yeah b

You: i'm just a projection

You: of your inner desires

You: baby fight me

You: fight me

Stranger: no dude thats pretty gay

You: c'mon

You: just suck my tit then

You: c'mon baby

Stranger: wtf i thought you were a dude??

Stranger: are you a trap?

You: no b

You: i'm your mom

Stranger: because sometimes i want a trap to go my own way with

Stranger: just two bros except she looks kinda femme

You: be the trap you want to see in the world

Stranger: but she wont divorce rape me or get pregnant

You: i'll accept you my child

Stranger: no, im a masculine manly alpha as fuck dude!

You: yeah

You: bet you couldn't drink rubbing alcohol

You: you sound like a pussy my child

Stranger: bet you i can

Stranger: i’ll drink a bunch of rubbing alcohol right now

Stranger: prove it to you that im a real man

You: ok baby

You: then you'll fuck me?

Stranger: no, thats gay

You: its not gay i'm you mom

Stranger: you sound like a pussy fag

You: you speak to your mom with those fingers?

Stranger: beta white knight

Stranger: i fucked your mom

You: you finger bang your mom with that mouth?

You: c'mon girl

Stranger: shut up bitch

Stranger: i am not a girl!

You: do you believe in love?

Stranger: love is for incels, im a chad

You: cause i got something to say about it

Stranger: i pump and dump traps everyday

You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsVcUzP_O_8

Stranger: whats that

You: its a hot song

You: to fuck too

You: yeah

Stranger: i heard that song before

You: yeah

You: on the radio?

Stranger: idk where

You: when you were a baby?

Stranger: maybe

You: maybe baby

Stranger: i have a fucking awesome manly memory

You: but you were a kid once

Stranger: nah i was a man when i was 6

Stranger: alpha as fuckkk

You: and isn't that where it all started?

You: where did they touch you?

Stranger: i fucked my teacher when i was 11 lol

You: oh boy

Stranger: yeahhh

You: that was rape

Stranger: no

Stranger: she let me

You: yeah, no

You: she raped you

Stranger: lol a woman cant rape a man

You: that's rape of a minor

Stranger: and besides i liked it xd

You: stilll... she should go to jail

Stranger: men always love sex

You: and you should go to therapy

Stranger: lol its every dudes fantasy bro

You: you sound all fucked up my dude

Stranger: dude wtf??

You: yeah man

Stranger: im not fucked up you are

You: i'm not your mom

Stranger: why tf you support feminism?

You: i'm your friend

You: and i think you need helpo

You: like

You: professional help

You: this is serious

Stranger: i think we chatted before

You: oh probably

Stranger: you’re the really gullible guy who believed everything i said

You: oh totally

You: i must be

You: i believe it

You: i am just real gullable

Stranger: yes totally

You: cool

Stranger: so bro

Stranger: wanna have a barbecue

You: yeah boy

Stranger: hang out, do some bro stuff

You: i'll bring a six pack

Stranger: thanks bro

You: and give you the number of a therapist

Stranger: lol dudes dont need therapists

Stranger: we dont talk about our emotions like girls do!

You: we gotta work on your approach with the ladies man

Stranger: naaah im mgtow now

You: like, that was rough

You: dude, if this is your way

You: its not a good way

Stranger: yeah its a good way

You: it's not to late to deescelate

Stranger: independent free of women

Stranger: m g t o w

You: no man, you are a slave to women

You: you've given them all the power

Stranger: lol says the beta cuck on the plantation

Stranger: no bitch i dont give them power

You: man, you have

Stranger: i just ignore them bitches and gold diggers

Stranger: i fuck traps instead haha xd

You: to come off so hostile at every moment of your life

You: to deny yourself love

Stranger:

Stranger: im a fucking dude bro

Stranger: i aint denying myself love

Stranger: love is for pussy beta fags

You: its cause you dont wanna get hurt

Stranger: real men pump and dump

Stranger: redpilled as fuckkk

Stranger: men dont get hurt

Stranger: men dont cry

You: yeah dude

Stranger: we’re fucking amazing

You: i'm glad you are just trolling bro

Stranger: not a troll bro

You: cause this otherwise would be unhealthy

You: no you must be

You: cause otherwise it would be so so so sad

Stranger: but really its so fun to pretend to be a sensitive fragile dude

You: like what a sad creature

Stranger: i know right!

You: like god-damn gollem

You: with no ring

Stranger: i love doing this its like literally they get offended by everything

You: yeah

Stranger: men are really dumb

You: i'm surprised you didnt mention venezula

Stranger: oh righttt

Stranger: well the character im playing isnt a capitalist anyways

You: oh yeah?

You: what is he?

Stranger: feudalist :p

You: ha ha

Stranger: anyways i think im manlier than you and i finished my rubbing alcohol

You: that legit made me laugh

You: ok dude

Stranger: well you think im kidding

You: the feudalist part

Stranger: oh

You: ok, maybe call 911?

Stranger: well i wasnt going to admit to being a fascist after i told you feminazis are the real fascists

You: yeah, i mean, it wouldn't stop a nazi

You: probalby

You: "like, feminists are nazis, but also like... i support the kkk"

You: anyway, you ever listen to riot girl music?

Stranger: no not really

You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKAtmRhsF30

You: oh wait

You: this isn't it

You: ....

Stranger: true tho

Stranger: what even??

You: https://krecs.bandcamp.com/track/all-women-are-bitches

You: there we are

You: i don't know what was up with that first one

You: anyway, Fifth Column was pretty cool

Stranger: oh

Stranger: not really my type of music tbh

You: fair enough

You: what kind of music you like?

Stranger: idk honestly

You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3V1SKM0uVo

You: here's a weird scifi mashup album

You: with a robot socialist agenda i think

Stranger: im not a socialist haha

Stranger: or even anti-capitalist at all

You: i mean, its hard not to buy in

You: in for a penny, in for a pound

Stranger: nice try but im not going to become a commie

You: idk, i mean you say that now

You: but someday you might have to renounce your ways

Stranger: im pretty content being a class traitor, thanks tho

You: lol

Stranger: i love licking the boots of female ceos just as much as male ones :)

You: good for you

You: i mean, after the revolution we'll all have boots

You: and we can take turns

Stranger: no thx boots are oppressive

You: no dude they got good grips

You: to prevent slippery slopes

Stranger: literally foot binding and patriarchy in disguise

Stranger: lol

You: oh, i see what your into now

Stranger: boots are just heels under a different name

You: bondage and heals

Stranger: ?

You: they'll have bdsm after the revolution

Stranger: im not into bdsm haha

You: why not?

Stranger: because bdsm is inherently oppressive to women

You: you're so normy

Stranger: reinforces misogynistic stereotypes

Stranger: ikr

Stranger: patriarchy literally

You: women on top

Stranger: no, thats still misogyny

You: matriarchy

Stranger: but honestly

Stranger: men who have that fetish are honestly sooo misogynistic

You: yeah

Stranger: puttig women on a pedestal isnt any better

Stranger: bdsm is misogynistic

You: and like often into cops and normy shit

Stranger: no revolution

Stranger: i love cops

You: ha

Stranger: they protect and serve us 💕

Stranger: buuuutt

Stranger: 50% of cops should be female

You: thats what your sub should be doing

Stranger: sub?

You: your submissive man servant

Stranger: i dont have one

You: never too late

Stranger: thats pretty gay tbh

You: he give good head

You: and does the dishes

You: and he's there by choice

Stranger: lol matriarchy and gynocentricity

Stranger: feminazis r oppressin men

You: in your case its a gaytriarchy

Stranger: im a girl

You: oh yeah?

Stranger: yeah

Stranger: im not like other girls

You: you a swerf?

Stranger: yeah i think sex workers rights are dumb

You: gross

Stranger: they should be sex slaves

You: double gross

Stranger: swerf and terf

You: gross x infinity

Stranger: grossssss

You: so what brought you to these terrible opinions?

Stranger: well i watch fox news

You: no further info required

Stranger: :)

You: you watch the OA?

Stranger: whats that

You: netflix show

Stranger: nope

You: its pretty good

Stranger: ehhh not my type of show

You: there are men in it

Stranger: gross

You: they go there own way

Stranger: that sounds nice actually

You: yeah

Stranger: i wish all men would go their own way

You: wish they would leave faster

Stranger: is it wrong to want all men dead?

You: if you are pulling the trigger probably

You: but if its like an accident

Stranger: no, i mean like i want them to just conveniently disappear

You: yeah

You: that sounds normal

You: but also, don't we all have little secret prayers

You: for a goddess to strike our enemies down

Stranger: its pretty late

Stranger: i should probably get going

You: yeah

You: ok, have a good sleep

Stranger: good night!

You: :)

Stranger has disconnected.

[blogwritetheworld]

Featured Writer: Christopher Labaza

Christopher Labaza used to hate writing about himself. He preferred to pen fantastical stories  set in fictional lands. But recently, the North Carolinian has challenged himself to write stories rooted in reality and to write more introspectively. This, says Christopher, has helped him see others in a new light. In today’s Featured Writer Q&A, Christopher elaborates on the evolution of his writing and where he sees his craft taking him in the future.

Your piece "Two Mutts" was named Runner Up in our Flash Fiction Competition! What kind of experience, if any, did you have with this genre prior to entering the competition? Can you tell us a bit about your writing process for this story?

I actually really love flash fiction. It's nice and short but packs a punch. It forces the writer to only include the essential parts of the story. When you only have 99 words, each one must be perfect. The key to writing excellent flash fiction is giving the narrator a distinct and powerful voice. Your words don’t have to be eloquent or flowery. Sometimes, depending on the theme or purpose of the story, I like to give it a rough edge by using almost broken English.

I like to hinge my stories off one, or a few, simple ideas. These ideas may pertain to a certain character, place, or phrase. In the case of "Two Mutts”, I began with the image of a "spitting sky”. From there, the character blossomed. And from the character, a story. Once I had the gist of the story down on paper, I checked my word count and then began to chip away at the expendable words and ideas. I really think it came alive in the editing process. That was where the narrator's voice stuck out and all the other pieces fell into place.

Who or what are some of your biggest writing inspirations?

For a long time, I was afraid of writing about myself. I wanted to put my story in fantasy worlds where I would never go, or to write about things that I could distance myself from. But after some intense thinking, I saw the flaw in my reasoning. I began to look inside myself to find my own voice. It's almost like I use myself as a specimen for studying people, both as individuals and in relation to one another. This has really helped me come to understand others in a new light. I can project myself onto them, which is kind of like walking in their shoes. And another part of that is letting others walk in your shoes.

I’m also inspired by people. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens says, "A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other." I am inspired to write to try to unlock those secrets and to share the secrets of myself with others.

You come from a family of five boys. What's it like having a big family—especially one with so many boys?

It is nice to have a gang of companions to hang out with—even if we do quarrel sometimes. We tend to enjoy the same things and we are always very busy. My poor parents run around all over the place to try and keep up with up with us between school, clubs, soccer practices, etc. But I think the best part about being from a big family is that you’re never alone. You always have a buddy to start something new with, and there’s always someone to talk to or play with. Sometimes it is hard to get away from it all to sit down and write, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Where do you see your writing taking you in the future?

I hope that I can make a living out of writing some day. A year or so ago, I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself. I was young, bright, hard working, and very curious, which basically meant I could be anything I wanted to be. With endless possibilities, it was hard to choose a path to follow. But, in the past year, I have been writing a lot more. It’s really the only thing I want to do. Luckily, there are many routes a writer can take—from technical writing to journalism to creative writing. If everything works out the way I hope it will, I will become a novelist and write and dream all day long.

When and where do get your best writing done?

For me, there is no perfect place, but rather a Goldilocks zone. I prefer to write on my laptop, but I also will write on my phone from time to time. And I like to write when it is quiet. But if not, I can always put in my ear buds and drown out the noise with music. I find it a lot easier to write at night, but it’s not a necessity.

You're from Raleigh, North Carolina. If you had to create mini travel guide for someone visiting the area, which attractions and activities would you put on the list?

One of my favorite things to do in Raleigh is to visit one of the many museums. There's the North Carolina Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of History, Marbles Kids Museum, and, my personal favorite, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, which my family calls the Dinosaur Museum because of its great dinosaur exhibit. There are also some great parks and forests in the area such as Umstead State Park. Seasonal attractions I would recommended are sporting events like a North Carolina State basketball and football game. You could also attend a Carolina Hurricanes hockey game. In the fall, the State Fair attracts visitors from across the state who enjoy fun, games, and food.

[demitgibbs]

Freedom Through Femininity: All-American Rejects Front Man Strips Down

Tyson Ritter strips down to nothing for the All-American Rejects’ new queer project.

Fuzzy leopard-print top, blonde wig, fake eyelashes, low-cut skirt, stilettos – the front man de-drags as he transforms from a prostitute, Betsy, to a seemingly married, suited-up man and life of the party, Robert.

The 11-minute short film conceptualizes identity and authenticity through the complicated and ultimately haunting duality of a single person. “Sweat,” a swaggering glam-rocker, finds Betsy leaving her mark on the streets – and in a bathroom stall when things get hot and heavy with an androgynous hookup. But then, during the juxtaposing come-down “Close Your Eyes,” we discover, tragically, Robert’s “real” life comes at a price.

As the alt-rockers mount a musical comeback with the two-song EP and a forthcoming album – their first since 2012’s Kids in the Street – Ritter, 33, opened up about his own femininity, being asexual for three years, his strong opinion on how “everybody’s selling celebrity” and being there for his lesbian sister when their family was not.

WATCH:

Can you tell me about the concept of this short film and how you ended up using a crossdresser as your subject?

Jamie Thraves is a brilliant British film director who we were lucky enough – he’s actually FaceTiming me right now. Hang on. (Laughs) We’ve become brothers over this, but he approached us with a simple one-line concept that just said, “I see Tyson playing a woman and I see him playing a man named Robert whose fantasy is playing that woman.” It broadened beyond that through our correspondence because, of course, I had immediate questions for him about the story of Robert and the purpose of this film. Once we boiled it down, it was just this concept of identity and how people in all walks of life are never the same person in any room they walk into. I think Robert’s struggle to find himself was something that bled into my correspondence with Jamie, and we just started exploring all of our dark secrets together. It was really this cathartic thing to just talk about our lives and the regrets we’ve had and the compromising things we’ve done to become the person we were and are.

How have you had to come to term with your own identity? Have you ever questioned your own sexuality?

I absolutely have. I went through a really bad breakup when I was in my mid ’20s and I was asexual for almost three years, just living in New York by myself, totally stone sober and trying to find myself. I was raised by my mom and my grandma, and that femininity and that balance within myself of the masculine and feminine has always been a yin-yang. It’s pushing and pulling, always. And I embrace that energy because I think some of the strongest things about me are from what my mother and my Nannu gave me.

I feel like most alt-rockers are comfortable exploring the gender spectrum.

Iggy, man. I was covering my body in glitter in 2009 and everybody thought I was a lunatic. People forget about the spectacle of rock ’n’ roll being something that is fearless. To be a superhero in a band is something that takes all powers. And when you’re on the stage and giving yourself to thousands of people, you have to be this cartoon; it’s beautiful to embrace that in your own life.

These tea dates, where you meet with fans and have tea, which I love, aren’t exactly the most masculine thing. Have you had any tea dates with anyone from the queer community?

My tea dates have just started, so it’s been such a mixed bag of all walks of life. It’s incredible. People have been like, “Oh, you should journal about your tea time,” and I’m like, “No, this is precious to me and private.” A lot of people sell their time to their fans. Everybody is selling access now and I think that’s the fucking complete corruption of what’s going on with the music business. Everybody’s for sale in a completely different, fucked up way.

Are you referring to certain mega pop stars who give themselves to their fans in charitable ways for the purpose of advertising their brand?

I mean, I can’t even touch that, man. Everybody’s selling celebrity. And we’re a band that only sells music, and that was the most important part about this visual journey for this band. I grew up in front of the record button since I was 16 – how much have you fucking changed since you were 16? It’s funny, people put these expectations on bands to sound the same, to stay in that little time capsule with their friends from high school and their dreams in their twin-size bed and it’s like, no, art has to grow up;  the artist can grow up with you, man. And so that’s where we came at with this new offering of “Sweat”/”Close Your Eyes.” We’re coming back with purpose and I’m proud of that because, ultimately, I’m not trying to sell ad time on my Insta account. Everybody has to have access to you now and so it’s really kind of – I might be shooting myself in the foot because I’m not being this, you know, social whore that most people have to be to play in this crazy rat race of the music business.

As someone who’s been acting for several years now, you may be aware of opposition to cis, white men acting as LGBT or queer. There’s been a lot of pushback regarding this. How conscious were you of that sentiment while developing the storyline for this video?

I always knew that (Betsy) was a fantasy of Robert and it’s that suspension of disbelief that kept me grounded in the character. My wife helped me a lot. I just wanted to make sure that I grabbed onto all the femininity that I’m not afraid to show and put it into Betsy. I didn’t wanna approach the character half-assed at all, and as far as it being a risk to play that role, to me it was an escape and a surreal journey through a fantasy of Robert’s. At the heart of this story is a man named Robert who has a life and has a purpose, and I was serving him. So, I guess I didn’t feel like there was a compromise given that the character I was playing was the true heart of this journey.

In what ways do you identify with Betsy when it comes to any overlapping femininity?

I think that’s precious to me. I think if there is overlap, just top to bottom, it was the curation of getting her walk down. I would wake up almost every day and put on my heels and walk around my house for hours on end to find my gesticulations and where Betsy carries herself. I think it was some of (my) stage persona. There’s a crazy confidence to Betsy that I loved being able to embrace and Robert didn’t have that. Robert’s this guy who hides from himself, and I think being able to embrace that was really a freeing thing. Honestly, it put me back in my own skin in a completely different way where even now on stage I’m finally feeling comfortable to embrace everything that I am.

Growing up in Stillwater, Oklahoma, what was your introduction to the LGBT community?

My sister. I was 10 years old when my baby sister was born and my parents had a complex, tumultuous Oklahoma divorce, and I was there to sort of raise her in a lot of ways. When I had to get on the road when I was 16, leaving her was… even talking about it, it kind of echoes a heartbreak for me. We kept our correspondence, and as she grew, I was on the road. When she was 15, she came out.

Getting the family’s acceptance in Oklahoma at 15 – I mean, probably one of the most difficult things I’ve had to help her survive. She helped me survive getting through just being an artist, too, because my parents haven’t always supported me. So we were holding each other’s hand as she got to 18, and now she’s engaged to be married. But I kind of saw a lot of (the LGBT community) through her eyes.

There are few things harder than not being accepted for who you are, but it sounds like you had each other to lean on.

We did. At Christmases we were holding each other in the corner. We were the two weirdos, but at least we had each other.

What does she think of “Sweat”/“Close Your Eyes”?

She loves it. She was so proud of me. I was really nervous. I was like, “I hope you love it and I hope you think I did good.” And she called me and she still has that Southern voice: “Aw, man, ‘Sweat’ is so good. You did so good, bubba.”

There’s an album in the works. What can the gay community look forward to?

This music is gonna be out, man. This isn’t gonna be an All-American Rejects record. This is a record that is gonna feature a lot of evolution. People are either gonna be grabbing onto it or they’re gonna be letting go, and I welcome both.

You’ve given the LGBT community many encouraging songs over the years, including “Move Along.” Can we expect more along those lines?

I realize that, in these divisive times, there is so much hate and division. The thing that breaks my heart right now in the world is just how divided we are. Even my parents didn’t go through this shit. I think it’s pouring out of me right now, so the things that I see and feel in the world are the things that I’m gonna be writing about. There are gonna be songs for people who just want to sing out as an escape, but this isn’t gonna be empathetic pandering – rock ’n’ roll is the escape, man, and I feel like we’ve lost that sentiment with celebrity. People are forgetting about the music.

When you come to a Rejects show, it’s non-denominational; it’s a congregation of people who are there to let go of the outside world. The greatest thing that we can do as a people is gather without any sort of ill-will, especially nowadays. So, the beautiful thing about this next Rejects record? It’s gonna be something that sets people free. That’s what it’s doing for me, man.

As editor of Q Syndicate, the international LGBT wire service, Chris Azzopardi has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. Reach him via his website at www.chris-azzopardi.com and on Twitter (@chrisazzopardi).

from Hotspots! Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2017/09/14/freedom-through-femininity-all-american-rejects-front-man-strips-down/ from Hot Spots Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.tumblr.com/post/165331532165

[cynthiajayusa]

Freedom Through Femininity: All-American Rejects Front Man Strips Down

Tyson Ritter strips down to nothing for the All-American Rejects’ new queer project.

Fuzzy leopard-print top, blonde wig, fake eyelashes, low-cut skirt, stilettos – the front man de-drags as he transforms from a prostitute, Betsy, to a seemingly married, suited-up man and life of the party, Robert.

The 11-minute short film conceptualizes identity and authenticity through the complicated and ultimately haunting duality of a single person. “Sweat,” a swaggering glam-rocker, finds Betsy leaving her mark on the streets – and in a bathroom stall when things get hot and heavy with an androgynous hookup. But then, during the juxtaposing come-down “Close Your Eyes,” we discover, tragically, Robert’s “real” life comes at a price.

As the alt-rockers mount a musical comeback with the two-song EP and a forthcoming album – their first since 2012’s Kids in the Street – Ritter, 33, opened up about his own femininity, being asexual for three years, his strong opinion on how “everybody’s selling celebrity” and being there for his lesbian sister when their family was not.

WATCH:

Can you tell me about the concept of this short film and how you ended up using a crossdresser as your subject?

Jamie Thraves is a brilliant British film director who we were lucky enough – he’s actually FaceTiming me right now. Hang on. (Laughs) We’ve become brothers over this, but he approached us with a simple one-line concept that just said, “I see Tyson playing a woman and I see him playing a man named Robert whose fantasy is playing that woman.” It broadened beyond that through our correspondence because, of course, I had immediate questions for him about the story of Robert and the purpose of this film. Once we boiled it down, it was just this concept of identity and how people in all walks of life are never the same person in any room they walk into. I think Robert’s struggle to find himself was something that bled into my correspondence with Jamie, and we just started exploring all of our dark secrets together. It was really this cathartic thing to just talk about our lives and the regrets we’ve had and the compromising things we’ve done to become the person we were and are.

How have you had to come to term with your own identity? Have you ever questioned your own sexuality?

I absolutely have. I went through a really bad breakup when I was in my mid ’20s and I was asexual for almost three years, just living in New York by myself, totally stone sober and trying to find myself. I was raised by my mom and my grandma, and that femininity and that balance within myself of the masculine and feminine has always been a yin-yang. It’s pushing and pulling, always. And I embrace that energy because I think some of the strongest things about me are from what my mother and my Nannu gave me.

I feel like most alt-rockers are comfortable exploring the gender spectrum.

Iggy, man. I was covering my body in glitter in 2009 and everybody thought I was a lunatic. People forget about the spectacle of rock ’n’ roll being something that is fearless. To be a superhero in a band is something that takes all powers. And when you’re on the stage and giving yourself to thousands of people, you have to be this cartoon; it’s beautiful to embrace that in your own life.

These tea dates, where you meet with fans and have tea, which I love, aren’t exactly the most masculine thing. Have you had any tea dates with anyone from the queer community?

My tea dates have just started, so it’s been such a mixed bag of all walks of life. It’s incredible. People have been like, “Oh, you should journal about your tea time,” and I’m like, “No, this is precious to me and private.” A lot of people sell their time to their fans. Everybody is selling access now and I think that’s the fucking complete corruption of what’s going on with the music business. Everybody’s for sale in a completely different, fucked up way.

Are you referring to certain mega pop stars who give themselves to their fans in charitable ways for the purpose of advertising their brand?

I mean, I can’t even touch that, man. Everybody’s selling celebrity. And we’re a band that only sells music, and that was the most important part about this visual journey for this band. I grew up in front of the record button since I was 16 – how much have you fucking changed since you were 16? It’s funny, people put these expectations on bands to sound the same, to stay in that little time capsule with their friends from high school and their dreams in their twin-size bed and it’s like, no, art has to grow up;  the artist can grow up with you, man. And so that’s where we came at with this new offering of “Sweat”/”Close Your Eyes.” We’re coming back with purpose and I’m proud of that because, ultimately, I’m not trying to sell ad time on my Insta account. Everybody has to have access to you now and so it’s really kind of – I might be shooting myself in the foot because I’m not being this, you know, social whore that most people have to be to play in this crazy rat race of the music business.

As someone who’s been acting for several years now, you may be aware of opposition to cis, white men acting as LGBT or queer. There’s been a lot of pushback regarding this. How conscious were you of that sentiment while developing the storyline for this video?

I always knew that (Betsy) was a fantasy of Robert and it’s that suspension of disbelief that kept me grounded in the character. My wife helped me a lot. I just wanted to make sure that I grabbed onto all the femininity that I’m not afraid to show and put it into Betsy. I didn’t wanna approach the character half-assed at all, and as far as it being a risk to play that role, to me it was an escape and a surreal journey through a fantasy of Robert’s. At the heart of this story is a man named Robert who has a life and has a purpose, and I was serving him. So, I guess I didn’t feel like there was a compromise given that the character I was playing was the true heart of this journey.

In what ways do you identify with Betsy when it comes to any overlapping femininity? 

I think that’s precious to me. I think if there is overlap, just top to bottom, it was the curation of getting her walk down. I would wake up almost every day and put on my heels and walk around my house for hours on end to find my gesticulations and where Betsy carries herself. I think it was some of (my) stage persona. There’s a crazy confidence to Betsy that I loved being able to embrace and Robert didn’t have that. Robert’s this guy who hides from himself, and I think being able to embrace that was really a freeing thing. Honestly, it put me back in my own skin in a completely different way where even now on stage I’m finally feeling comfortable to embrace everything that I am.

Growing up in Stillwater, Oklahoma, what was your introduction to the LGBT community?

My sister. I was 10 years old when my baby sister was born and my parents had a complex, tumultuous Oklahoma divorce, and I was there to sort of raise her in a lot of ways. When I had to get on the road when I was 16, leaving her was… even talking about it, it kind of echoes a heartbreak for me. We kept our correspondence, and as she grew, I was on the road. When she was 15, she came out.

Getting the family’s acceptance in Oklahoma at 15 – I mean, probably one of the most difficult things I’ve had to help her survive. She helped me survive getting through just being an artist, too, because my parents haven’t always supported me. So we were holding each other’s hand as she got to 18, and now she’s engaged to be married. But I kind of saw a lot of (the LGBT community) through her eyes.

There are few things harder than not being accepted for who you are, but it sounds like you had each other to lean on.

We did. At Christmases we were holding each other in the corner. We were the two weirdos, but at least we had each other.

What does she think of “Sweat”/“Close Your Eyes”?

She loves it. She was so proud of me. I was really nervous. I was like, “I hope you love it and I hope you think I did good.” And she called me and she still has that Southern voice: “Aw, man, ‘Sweat’ is so good. You did so good, bubba.”

There’s an album in the works. What can the gay community look forward to?

This music is gonna be out, man. This isn’t gonna be an All-American Rejects record. This is a record that is gonna feature a lot of evolution. People are either gonna be grabbing onto it or they’re gonna be letting go, and I welcome both.

You’ve given the LGBT community many encouraging songs over the years, including “Move Along.” Can we expect more along those lines?

I realize that, in these divisive times, there is so much hate and division. The thing that breaks my heart right now in the world is just how divided we are. Even my parents didn’t go through this shit. I think it’s pouring out of me right now, so the things that I see and feel in the world are the things that I’m gonna be writing about. There are gonna be songs for people who just want to sing out as an escape, but this isn’t gonna be empathetic pandering – rock ’n’ roll is the escape, man, and I feel like we’ve lost that sentiment with celebrity. People are forgetting about the music.

When you come to a Rejects show, it’s non-denominational; it’s a congregation of people who are there to let go of the outside world. The greatest thing that we can do as a people is gather without any sort of ill-will, especially nowadays. So, the beautiful thing about this next Rejects record? It’s gonna be something that sets people free. That’s what it’s doing for me, man.

As editor of Q Syndicate, the international LGBT wire service, Chris Azzopardi has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. Reach him via his website at www.chris-azzopardi.com and on Twitter (@chrisazzopardi).

source https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2017/09/14/freedom-through-femininity-all-american-rejects-front-man-strips-down/ from Hot Spots Magazine http://hotspotsmagazin.blogspot.com/2017/09/freedom-through-femininity-all-american.html

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Each of Us a Desert: How Mark Oshiro Crafted Their YA Latinx Fantasy

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Mark Oshiro’s Each of Us a Desert is about finding your place in this world through the most unexpected means, while staying true to yourself. Part coming-of-age story, part fantasy, this book not only delivers an enchanting tale, but also has some of the most creative world building happening in speculative fiction right now—all told through a Latinx lens.

The Each of Us a Desert story follows Xochitl, a cuentista of her home of Empalme. As a cuentista, Xo has the ability and responsibility of retaining the stories and sins from the villagers and returning them to the sun, aka their god Solís,. In this world, Solís has stripped the world bare with its fire and only left far and few in between alive. While this may sound like a post-apocalyptic wasteland a la Mad Max, there is just as much joy, wonder, and love as there is danger, hunger, and pain to be found in this world. There is a romantic element to the book as well, one that tips the scales to the side of good, but doesn’t take away from the coming-of-age elements. Xo’s strength, conviction, and willingness to treat those around her with kindness makes her stand out amongst the cast of characters in this book, her heart guiding her as she finds herself in the desert they call home.

Den of Geek had the chance to speak with Mark Oshiro about creating this compelling story of survival, love, and hope while holding onto his own roots as a Latino man who just so happens to be queer themselves. Here’s what they had to tell us….

Den of Geek: Where did you get the idea for Each of Us a Desert? Where did it come from?

As I talk about the Genesis of this project, I also have to admit that I would say maybe 1% of that first draft is what actually ended up in the final draft.

It happens sometimes… you have an idea, but it takes you on a really weird path. But the initial idea came before I even had a book deal. It was when I had gotten an agent and my agent asked me if I was working on any of the projects. And I was like, “No,” because I’m trying to get this published,” and he gave me a good piece of advice, which is, “Well, the book’s done. We can do whatever work we can to get it hopefully published. But right now you should think about what comes next. Do you have any ideas?” And I was like, “No, not really,” and because I just at that point was, especially when you’re unpublished you’re kind of just hoping the thing that you wrote is the thing that makes it. 

So I started giving it some thought and I had a very coincidental experience that inspired it. So myself and my twin brother, we’re adopted and we know very little about our biological parents. And so for many, many years, we’ve been sort of trying to find out who they are, where they are. I managed to track down our biological mother, but we’ve never met or seen his photo or even known the name of our biological father. And not long after this conversation, I had an experience with my brother where we did actually find our birth father’s whole name, which when you’re searching in records, when you’re searching for the legal stuff, that’s one of the most important parts and we’ve never had it. Unfortunately, in that very same document in which we found his name, we found out that he was not a U.S citizen and that he had given up his parental rights to us. And as far as we knew, went back to Mexico.

And all of a sudden, we went from the elation of, “We have information,” to … “Oh, there’s a border.” There’s this invisible line in the earth has now made this search just as hard as it was before. And so I remember coming back from my brother’s place and having this image in my head of this girl trying to find her parents and she was trying to cross this large expanse. It was just images. And this is the first time I didn’t have a concrete story idea. I just kind of just liked this image of like, “Someone searching for their parents,” because it was something that I was doing and that then took shape. And over the course of a month, I came up with this whole novel idea because it’s not the book that you read. It was very different, the first draft of this book was like far-future dystopia. It wasn’t fantasy at all. And so over the course of many, many edits, it became the book that is now, Each of Us a Desert, but that’s where it came from.

How did you approach the world-building aspect in the book?

The book wasn’t fantasy at the start. So I actually figured out the character arcs, particularly Emelia’s and Xochitl’s, those came naturally and came first. All of the world building came second. So I then designed the world around them, which is why so much of the world building is actually very intimate. It’s very personal and very emotional because unlike literally all fantasy authors ever, I came up with the world second. It was important for me to know what their stories were first. I feel it made the world building easier. If you know where a character’s going and what their journey looks and feels like…because then a lot of the details like the whole myth of cuentista was not a thing until draft three.

Solis was one of the only things that was in the first draft. Everything else came in bits and pieces, as I thought about how their story and what would be interesting about it? Once I realized like, “Oh, I think this is a magical power. It’s not something that’s a myth. What does that magic look like?” So it was coming up with their story and then building the world afterward. I will say that while some parts of it were easier. If I ever wrote a fancy book again, I would definitely come up with the world first, I think. I was just like, “Why didn’t I think of this first? I did this all backward.” So yeah. That’s how the world building went. It was not a typical path for a fantasy writer.

That’s intense, but it sounds like it was fun.

It was. It was fun discovering this stuff and that’s the part that I’ll never regret at all. I’m glad it happened the way it did because it was fun to stumble across things. There is a grand design in the end, but in the beginning it wasn’t, it was all about discovery, which I feel like that … weirdly, that theme is what the book is. It’s so much about discovery and whatnot so it kind of worked out for me.

And what parts of you and your Latinidad are in Each of Us a Desert?

Like I said, I’m adopted. So I’ve been very open about the fact that I’ve had a very bizarre experience because I am, what’s sort of called, a transracial adoptee because I was adopted by people of a different racial and ethnic group that I have. So my adopted mom is white. My adopted dad is Japanese, born in Hawaii. So it means that I wasn’t necessarily raised in a lot of the traditions or sort of cultural morals or beliefs that a lot of my fellow Latinx people can relate to. It meant that I often felt very isolated. I felt alone. I felt like I didn’t fit in. So on that level, there’s a lot of that sort of spirituary in Each of Us a Desert where you have this character who might be in a group of people who look like her, who believe the same things like her and yet she feels so isolated. She feels so very alone. 

I learned Spanish, bits and pieces as a kid, especially picking it up on the playground. Years ago though… part of how I wanted to sort of reclaim my identity was re-learning Spanish. So I’ve spent the last four years studying it fairly intensely, and this was the first time I wanted to go there. I mean, there’s Spanish in Anger Is a Gift, but it’s in very small pieces. And this is the first time I was like, “Look, I think I really want to do this and I want to commit to it.” 

I’m very proud to be able to say that all of the poems that are in the book, I wrote in Spanish completely. It was only after the fact that I translated them. And even then, I mean, that’s the beauty of Spanish and Spanish as a language is that there is something where the English just doesn’t quite nail what the word means. It’s almost there, but it’s not quite. And so I love that there’s going to be sort of this extra layer for anyone who speaks Spanish. That there’s an extra meaning.

I think that is one way that it shows up, my Latinidad. And it also shows up in talking about queerness, being a Latino and growing up in a place that felt rural. It didn’t feel like a big metropolitan city. And I think there’s a lot of that in the construction of me. I grew up in Riverside, California. It is not a small town by any means.

And you pull from parts of your life as inspiration. But I think the fun, especially with Each of Us a Desert, was getting to just do new things and experiment and write things that may have nothing to do with me. I think most of Each of Us a Desert, where Anger Is a Gift is very business autobiographical, this book is almost an emotional sense, not in experiential sense.

Talking about being queer, and I like that the book talks about change and becoming the person you were always meant to be. Can you talk about exploring those themes in Each of Us a Desert?

I love that this book is not a big city. There is a big city for a small portion of it, but it’s not. It’s about being in a small town. And that feeling of feeling isolated and alone. And I loved getting to write this story that sort of has both a very on-the-page queerness throughout with multiple characters, but then there’s a subtextual queerness to it too, which is that so many of us have to leave the places we were born or leave the places we grew up in order to find ourselves.

And I love getting to write that for Xochitl. And getting to write this journey where she comes to understand who she is. And there’s an agency to that. It’s not just understanding who she is, but choosing where you are. And I love that she gets to choose who she is, who she has in her life and what love means to her. I think out of everything in the book, it’s probably the thing I’m most proud of is her journey and where she ends up. And it comes very much from a place of appreciating my own journey and getting to come into my own and coming into my true self.

That’s beautiful.

Thank you.

I wanted to ask what books inspired this book?

Two in particular were super influential. One is what was one of the only Latinx books I read while in school, which was Rudolfo Anaya’s book Bless Me, Ultima. It’s almost spiritually in conversation with that book, even though one is a contemporary, the other one is very sort of fantasy, I feel like it’s undeniable, when you think about the two books. How they’re in conversation with one another, particularly in how magic can be a personal thing.

The other big one is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. The original version of Each of Us a Desert was our future dystopia. And so it shares that sort of backbone with it, even though it’s not that book anymore. What it became is so much about this teenage girl sort of facing the notion of dogma. What do her people believe and how is that belief challenged when she gets out of her world? And I think a lot about how Parable of the Sower is about challenging your belief system and challenging what you were raised to believe, but then also how much the protagonist of Parable of the Sower reclaims her identity. She reclaims her belief system. So those were sort of the two guiding influences that I had when I was writing the book.

If one day this was going to end up on TV or made into a movie, who would you dream cast as the major roles?

So here’s an interesting confession. I didn’t really get asked this question for Anger Is a Gift, so I never had an answer ready. But part of the reason why is because I actually don’t cast the things that I write.

Really?

A lot of people will… they’ll do mood boards. I actually avoid using real life images for my characters, because I want them to look like the version in my head, if that makes sense. I sort of fully commit them into my brain. Like, “This is what I think they look like. This is how I think they behave or whatnot.” And so I have actually never really truly thought about who would play these characters in a movie.

Totally understandable.

I saw this question, I was like, “Oh, I haven’t done this because I don’t do this for anything.” That being said, my hope was that in writing it…there’s a very specific way that I talk about characters, their hair textures, their skin colors, and their facial features. Like, I want this cast to be entirely brown.”

Yas!

And I want them to act like Latinx people.

Sounds amazing. 

Hands down. For a reason. And I mean, there’s also a spoiler reason why it needs to be that way, that I can’t really talk about because but I don’t want to spoil a thing that you find out towards the end.

Yeah. I am 75% into the book right now. I am almost done.

Then I definitely don’t want to talk about what it is. There is a reason for the skin tone stuff that’s intentional. And so I wrote the book that way, because if it gets made into something, that’s something that’s going to be very important to me is, I want the people to look a certain way, not only for the internal logic of the role, but it’s also… I think it’s intentional in terms of representing a lot of the people who get ignored in our community too.

Absolutely.

It’s something that’s important to me. So I have to think about who I would cast. I don’t know. Off the top of my head, I would love… Oh, I mean, now that I say that….

Yeah? What are you thinking? 

A lot of people don’t know, for example, that Lupita Nyong’o is both black and Mexican. And I would love. There’s a … oh, I can’t tell you because I think it’s a spoiler. But there is a role that I’m like, “Oh shit, she would kill it.”

That would be perfect. Lupita in anything and everything.

Yes, in anything. But I think that’s a very intentional thing, too, is that a lot of people get mistaken about race and ethnicity when it comes to Latinx people and with Hispanic people. And I want to break that. I want to constantly support that and surprise who you expect to see is a Latinx person.

I love it. Last question, what else, if anything, are you working on right now?

Oh my God. So the timing of this is perfect because I can start to sort of talk about anything. So two things. First is that I just turned it edits on my middle grade debut, which is called Insiders. It’s out next year, which is a contemporary book with a dose of chaotic magic. It’s about a 12-year-old boy who, while fleeing from bullies, finds a magical closet that unites him with two other kids at different schools across the country. And they discover this weird, magical area that not only brings them together as friends, but helps them solve each other’s problems. It is my joyous, chaos bedded book, and I’m so excited about it. So that’s out of next year. I don’t have a schedule for it yet.

I just, literally, before this had a long meeting about my next book, which is going to be me returning to the contemporary world, but it is going to be a dark contemporary horror novel. I’m so excited because I wanted to write a fairly strict horror novel for a long time. There’s elements of it in Each of Us a Desert, but it’s not purely that. And I think this is my first chance I’ll be able to do that. And so right now I’m pitching it as if the movie Hereditary didn’t have any supernatural stuff in it and was somehow mixed with Aristotle and Dante: Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which are totally completely opposite things. But I think that’s a very weirdly good description of what this book is going to be.

That’s an amazing description. I want this now.

That’s the goal. I got to finish writing it. So I’m very excited about it. It’s much more autobiographical than Each of Us a Desert. And it’s really me leading it to a lot of my experience as a teenager in a way that I haven’t really written about it. So I’m excited to do something that is very personal to me, but also to kind of have fun with it and introduce you to this very frightening story.

I’m excited.

I’m so excited.

Thank you for talking with me today about this. It really, really has given me such amazing perspective on the book.

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Oh, thank you.

Each of Us a Desert is now available to buy. You can found out more about Mark Oshiro on their website.

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