don’t worry about it: behind the scenes & what’s next

Note: Spoilers abound for Don’t Worry About It

the part where i bloviate

There’s not much in terms of gratitude I can express that I haven’t already, multiple times. If you’re here, I assume you just finished Don’t Worry About It. Thank you. It means a lot to me. I hope you found it meaningful.

Here and there I’ve talked a little bit about my writing process for this novel. I figured there was no better time to collect my thoughts on my unofficial debut than the final day of posting. It actually feels a bit surreal, in the sense that I have now fully published a novel, as amateur as said publishing journey may have been.

First, a slight elephant in the room: almost no one read it. Obviously this could change… or it could not. I knew when I started posting it that ao3 was far from the best place to market it. To be honest, I don’t know of any platform that would be a good fit for Don’t Worry, including mainstream publishing. Even when trying to find an agent, I struggled with describing my target demographic because it’s such a niche topic. This doesn’t hurt my ego because I am confident in Don’t Worry’s quality, but I think it’s fair to say I am still disappointed in its performance. It’s difficult to swallow the amount of attention my m/m fanfiction got versus my original f/f fiction, but I can’t change what my readers are interested in, or the wider societal factors that influence said interests. To the people who have commented on my fanfiction over the years to say that you’d read a book if I ever published it… chop chop! Judge Judy tapping watch gif!

To the handful of people that read this week-to-week from the first chapter to the fortieth, god love ya. It means a lot to me that you trusted me to pull it off. That was like 20+ weeks of uncertainty, which is a big ask. This was not planned at all, but I ended up being pretty happy with the majority of the “cut off” points as I posted 2 chapters at a time. I didn’t even add chapters until after the entire book had been written, so it was just a happy coincidence things worked out that way.

As with a lot of my writing in recent years, I think Don’t Worry’s strongest point is the overarching story— on a grand scale, I am very happy with the story arc, character arcs, thematic elements, and how they all intertwine. I’ve mentioned before that I always try to ensure my endings are earned, and I think I succeeded here. Wren really gets put through the wringer, but not in a way that feels gratuitous or exaggerated, and her transformation (and ultimate realization that she can never truly win) is, conversely, hard-won.

Probably because it was my debut that I wrote on my own time and with no contractual obligations hanging over my head, I’m really proud to say I didn’t pull my punches. There are feminist themes in Don’t Worry that are very critical of a lot of liberal and even leftist views, especially calling into question choice feminism, plastic surgery, gender roles, and the sex/body positive movements. This is a narrative that is very critical of femininity as an institution, while also acknowledging that the women forced to live under this system are not perfect, free of bias, or slay queens just because they are women. Women can and do step on and destroy each other within the wider patriarchal system that seeks to step on and destroy them in turn. Wren (and Ashley) can be deeply unlikeable at times and make terrible (but hopefully understandable) decisions, while remaining sympathetic and complex.

I have often found a lot of “issue” narratives can feel very sterile and inhuman. While I wouldn’t call Don’t Worry an “issue” narrative 100%, there’s definitely something akin to it floating in its DNA. I think I succeeded in taking a lot of the more cringeworthy elements that you tend to see in issue narratives (proselytizing, prose that reads like a tumblr post, one-note hero/villain characters, etc) and offering a more complex, character-focused take. I also think it helps that it’s funny, but not a comedy. We tend to underestimate how powerful humour is in more serious narratives— really helps the medicine go down.

I am very pleased with the tension between Wren and Ashley, as well as their eventual crazy fuck sesh. Lesbians are so rarely portrayed as panting after crazy fuck seshes. Lesbians are so rarely portrayed as being sexual beings (in a way that isn’t a creepy porn category) at all, and I was more than happy to step up to the plate. Plus, who doesn’t love a good will they/won’t they with the added delirium of “does she actually like me or am i simply providing her with non-threatening attention”.

I love Wren. In the name of professionalism, I swore she wouldn’t be my cinnamon roll/blorbo/whatever the new term is, but what can I say. I’ve always loved (and been terrified of) an ice queen. For what it’s worth, I think I did a good job of hiding my affections…

… maybe save the ending. I really like the ending— I do think it’s earned, and I do think it fits into the “surprising but inevitable” camp I’ve banged on about before— but I had my concerns about it being “too easy”. I fretted about the fairly stereotypical time jumps that happen at the end. It’s so easy to skip over significant events and then reap the narrative rewards without ever having to devote page space to the grueling journey— the author is like, just trust me bro, Wren had a lot of quiet personal revelations during her year of living in the woods, you’re just gonna have to believe me. At the same time… I think the previous 39 chapters do a pretty good job of making their case.

I was also worried Ashley showing up of her own volition was a bit much. I think I tempered it pretty well with the final jab at how hopeless the world is for women with the Brandy stinger, but at the same time, I was really moved by the concept of Ashley, always a force to be reckoned with, deciding that actually, fuck what Wren thinks. Ashley’s here to stay, and changing Wren’s decor to suit her preferences as I type this, Wren leaning against the nearest doorframe, arms crossed, watching her work with a hidden smile on her face.

Don’t Worry’s most glaring weakness is the word count. For a literary fiction debut, this is a whopper at just under 110k. Had I gotten the chance to work with an editor, I would’ve been looking for some serious assistance with trimming down the first third. I complain about overlong first acts in books all the time, only to fall prey to the same evil urge. C’est la vie.

As with most of my writing, I find the prose pretty milquetoast. Like, it’s fine. There’s a few bangers hidden in there. But I know I’m capable of better. The problem is, being a good line-by-line writer is fucking hard. You know how many lines are in 110k? A lot. Better prose, meaningful prose, and lyrical (but not purple) prose are all things I will continue to strive for. I know I’m capable of it, is the thing. I just need to put in the work.

The plot, as such, could be tightened up. Notably the drama surrounding Ashley’s mom’s confederate flag decal/kissing Kristy debacle. Though I maintain that Wren thinking CHOO CHOO DYKE EXPRESS COMING THROUGH is incredibly funny is the correct reaction.

Near the end of Don’t Worry, Wren suffers what could kindly be called a break from reality and starts thinking of herself as an object, as it. The funniest possible story behind this is that when I first came up with the concept, it was like, a joke? Not a joke, exactly, but I immediately dismissed the idea as being too goofy, too on the nose, just too much. And then I wrote it anyway, and I realized how the logical endpoint of virulent, merciless objectification through her late teens and entire adult life so far leading to her entire sense of self being eclipsed by only how she was consumed by others, I was like, well, that makes perfect sense, actually. So it stayed.

Would it be weird if I wrote fanfiction for my own original fiction? I have no interest in writing fanfiction anymore, but surely this would count as an exception? Over the past year or so I went through a huge bigfoot phase, which included watching all 11 seasons of Finding Bigfoot. Incredible TV, highly recommend. Anyway, hear me out. For weeks I was consumed by a post canon fic where Wren somehow gets suckered into joining an all-women group of cryptozooligist bigfoot hunters who traipse through the woods one night every month to “gather evidence”, or, as the team on Finding Bigfoot calls it, “squatchin’”. The premise is absurd, but consider this: she lives in the PNW now. Of course there’s an all-women group of cryptozooligists who go on monthly outings to try and find evidence of bigfoot. Or, consider THIS: Wren has trouble connecting with other women. What better women for her to connect with, as a fellow freak, than a bunch of other freaks? They’re not the same breed of freak, but freaks gotta stick together. And of course because Wren is stupid hot, the youngest member of their group is a socially awkward 18 year old lesbian who develops a fat crush on her, which makes Ashley crrrrrrazy, because girlfriend derangement syndrome doesn’t stop just because you’re a lesbian (and also she’s super weirded out by Wren’s decision to do this in the first place because she doesn’t understand that community is the bigfoot wren found along the way), which eventually prompts them to go on a couples trip to visit Celia and Daphne so they can get “a weekend away", but THEN Wren is a moron and doesn’t mention to Ashley that Celia is her ex, and when Ashley finds out she goes even crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrazier (fair), which leads to Celia being like are you fucking kidding me you didn’t tell her?? and wren is sheepish and embarrassed and really doesn’t have an excuse beyond her still learning how to be in a real relationship and bad at communication and talking about things, which leads to Wren and Ashley having possessive sex in Celia’s guest bedroom on her squeaky guest bed (Celia was smart enough to vacate the premises and take Daphne out on a date) which leads to Wren proposing to Ashley in the middle of sweaty passionate sex, something that is obviously a sore spot for Ashley that they’ve never talked about, never planned for, and Wren didn’t even realize how badly she wanted Ashley to be her wife and for her to be Ashley’s wife until that moment, and Ashley goes even CRRRRRRRAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZIERRRRR (wren’s penchant for taking L’s remains quite strong post canon) before practically exploding into a million pieces and wail-accepting yet another shitty, unplanned proposal that is infinitely better than the last shitty, unplanned proposal she received, because she wanted it so bad and was so afraid to ever even touch that part of herself again, especially because if Wren turned her down or wasn’t interested in marriage she would blow up, and the fact that Wren brought it up unprompted and when they’re both high as fuck on sex hormones leads to maybe the most enthusiastic yes in the history of marriage proposals, despite the insane and slightly worrisome undertones, and yeah, that’s my presentation.

Sorry, I blacked out for a minute there. What was i saying?

Anyway… thanks for reading my book!

the part where i ask you for money on ko-fi

I threatened to start a donate page on this site, but I ended up settling on a ko-fi, as I believe more people are familiar with it, and, not to be a capitalist pig, but doing it here would cost money, and ko-fi is free. You can also blog over there, though I’ll have to do more research before deciding if it would be the right fit for the platform. In fact, I have no idea if Don’t Worry About It and any other lesbian works I’m considering writing would be considered erotica or pornography (regardless of my own personal feelings on the matter), and a lot of platforms don’t take kindly to that type of content. Lots of fanfiction writers use it so maybe it would be fine? Guess I’ll find out.

You can find me on ko-fi here. Regarding donations, please note: writing fanfiction has been a hobby of mine for over a decade, as well as a way to connect with the source medium, fandom, and myself. Writing fic has been as much for myself as it has been for others, though that doesn’t change how grateful I am for the overwhelmingly kind response (and discourse) my writing has generated over the years.

This ko-fi does not exist for “fic rendered”. I am not collecting or soliciting donations for fanfiction I wrote for fun, as a hobby (aka all of it). I wrote fic for the love of the game (and kudos) and I ask you to refrain from donating if your only goal is to thank me for my fandom contributions. I promise, your enjoyment and engagement is more than enough!

What this ko-fi does exist for is supporting my transition into writing original fiction. One day, maybe, possibly, if the planets align and the unknowable, non-existent forces that govern our existence are in a benevolent mood, a literary agent will deign to take me on as a client and I can become an “official” author, cashing “official” author cheques. However, today is not that day.

I have always struggled with the concept of being paid for my “work”, so I think a donate option is a fair middle ground now that I have left behind fanfiction (which I do not want to be paid for) and entering the terrifying world of having to make up everything myself. And, well, I’m a good writer. This is my craft, and I have spent years and an entire university degree honing it. I can only justify why I think I deserve to be paid for my original work so much before I start to undermine the art of writing as a whole.

THAT BEING SAID…

Donations are not expected or required, only appreciated. Any and all support (engagement, sharing my original work with others, etc) is just as, if not more valuable, than any dollar amount. Anything on my ao3 will always be available for free. Maybe I will produce paid original content in the future on ko-fi, though that is only a possibility.

the part where i Don’t Worry About It Ebook

As I just said, Don’t Worry About It is available for free on ao3. You can download it, print it, put it on your e-reader, whatever. However, I thought it might be fun to do an ebook version as well so that instead of just flat out donating, you can actually get something in return if you like. This is a PDF file I created that looks a little bit more like an actual novel as opposed to fanfiction. I’m not a professional— I couldn’t even get the cover art to convert from a word doc to a PDF gracefully, which is why it’s a bit grainy— but it was a fun project to work on, and potentially something I am interested in pursuing in the future. This is a “pay what you want” model, meaning exactly that, with the lowest price being $0.01.

The cover art was also really fun to do, and something I’ve had in mind for a while. It was inspired by the cover of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. I considered using a pen name that is less goofy than saltyfeathers, but am also mindful of the fact that in the future I might actually want to use said pen name for more mainstream pursuits, so for now, you’re stuck with the goofy ao3 username.

You can purchase the Don’t Worry About it Ebook here.

the part where i what’s next?

It’s so tempting to put “idk” and just leave it at that.

However, I do have plans. I spent the majority of my adult life purposely not having plans, or only having vague plans, and it has become eminently clear that specific goals are what I need to feel like a real human participating in real society. I expect to have a real life real boring real steady job soonish that will take up the majority of my weekdays. I am trying to fill my free time with meaningful and useful hobbies/skills. I am spending time with my family and trying to learn how to move through the everyday social landscape without feeling like I’m being crushed beneath a pressure equivalent to that found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I’m trying to figure out what I want in a future partner and future friends, because I spent a long time not putting any thought into either, and as a result ended up in relationships that left me exhausted, lonely, unfulfilled, and with a wealth of self-esteem issues that I feel way too old to have. Despite how impossible it feels, I also have my eye set on eventually becoming a homeowner, and based on my understanding, preparing for that transition can never begin early enough.

As for my writing, I’m about 1/3rd of the way through my next novel (with an eye toward serious plot revisions already, because of course). I can’t give specifics because I am hoping to actually get this one published, but if no one wants that one either, prepare to see it on ao3/ko-fi. This will come as no surprise if you’ve read basically any of my other blog posts that discuss mainstream publishing, but what that means is this novel is going to be “fun” and “palatable to a general audience” and “a lot less complex and interesting than what I’m capable of”. That doesn’t mean it sucks or anything. It’s just a bit… nerfed. But it’s still about lesbians! So, there’s that. Though somehow I doubt that helps much with the whole “getting published” or “palatable to a general audience” concepts.

There’s also a handful of short/novella-length ideas I’ve had kicking around for a while that I might peck away at in the short term. I would love if you stuck around to see what I’m up to, as keeping my writing fire burning means a lot to me and your engagement is a big part of what motivates me. During the drier spells, I would like to keep this blog (or ko-fi, or both) updated semi-frequently. Monthly at the least, I hope. Also, you can put your email address in the little box at the bottom of this page if you want email notifications when I post.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned :)

rape & sexual assault as plot points

Note the obvious content warnings for this one. Also, spoilers for up to chapter 38 of Don’t Worry About It!

I don’t always ask myself, “Why am I writing [specific thing]?” Sometimes—a lot of the time— I write what I want to write, what I am passionate about, or curious about, or interested in, you get it. I don’t question it. Sometimes the idea-generating portion of my creative process is as unknown to me as the bottom of the ocean. My brain does what it wants, and I’m just desperately trying to keep up.

However, there is a time and place to pause. To reflect. I think the question is less, “Why am I writing [specific thing]?” than it is, “What do I have to add to the discussion?”

Don’t Worry About It has two, arguably three, main characters. Wren, Ashley, and Leo. You may have noticed, or not, that all three of them are white. I’m white. I default to whiteness in my writing. I try to be aware of it in a way that isn’t some onerous, asinine, race-blind goofiness that makes me sound like a buffoon. I thought about it. These characters were white upon conception, but that doesn’t really mean anything, because they’re not real people. I considered changing at least one of their races. I felt awkward about it, because even though I try to be aware of my white default mode, I also felt like this was moving into uncomfortably tokenistic territory. And I, eyeroll-worthy overthinking hang-wringing white knight self-flagellator that I am (while also of course being totally cool about it), worried deeply that, “what if I change one of their races, but then I accidentally stereotype something negative about their race because none of these characters are particularly good people?” Because I guess every single person who isn’t white is a perfect princess? like, just calm down. Deep breaths. You can probably tell I both internalized a lot of 2010s tumblr rhetoric and am also deeply neurotic about it, because heaven forbid I ever make a single honest mistake or say something that someone watching from two states over on their telescope decides is problematic. The constant self-surveillance is real. The constant self-surveillance is not my friend. No marginalized group enjoys when others bend over backwards so far for them they lose their heads up their ass. Juuuuust be chill. An old inside joke from between me and a friend, still ringing true after all these years: Detroit become NORMAL.

The characters stayed white. All that bloviating and naval-gazing above (yes, it’s true, few people need to go outside more than I do) completely fell by the wayside because of a much more pertinent question: As a white author, what would I be adding to the conversation of how people of colour (note there was no specific race I was considering, just generic POC) navigate the celebrity world and every other significant theme that comes up in the narrative? As a white author, was I prepared to address how those themes intersected with their race? Fucking no, dude, of course not.

So for me, that settled the debate pretty firmly. At some point I think I’d like to talk a little more about representation in media and my maybe unconventional thoughts on it, but for now, this will have to suffice. Really, the above is meant as an example of what the process can look like when I’m trying to decide what staying in my lane means, without forgetting that the whole point of writing fiction is to explore other worlds, other people, other viewpoints, other… lanes. Other lanes are where we learn empathy, that we are the same but also different, and sometimes there will be fender benders when you’re driving in new places, and it’s fine, and we will all be okay.

At this point, I have now written multiple works that include rape or sexual assault as plot points, most notably Don’t Worry About It and, from my MDZS days, a moment on the lips, which may have slipped you by. Or it’s possible you saw it and intentionally let it slip you by. No hard feelings, it’s not for everyone. It’s not even for me. It’s a nasty little piece of work that explores both of Wei Wuxian’s stints in the Burial Mounds while he’s living there with the Wens and trading their safety for inventions/talismans sent to back to Jin Guangshan, with Lan Wangji serving as the go-between. For anyone who doesn’t know anything about MDZS, Wei Wuxian’s first stint in the Burial Mounds was bad and isn’t flushed out at all in the source material, beyond him honing his demonic cultivation skills, aka his bad boy powers. The world-building specifics are not super important for this discussion, but what is important is the fact that (in the fic) he was raped during his time at the Burial Mounds, which is discussed early on and throughout the narrative. Not explicitly, but it’s also not subtext that during this time, he was raped by (and developed a very complicated relationship with) a supernatural entity that took on Lan Wangji’s form, which of course makes things quite confusing when the real Lan Wangji shows up and has no idea what happened.

In Don’t Worry About It, Wren is coerced into giving Leo’s father a blowjob when she is seventeen, a gift from Leo to dad, as an offering, an apology for being a fuck-up that just got out of rich kid rehab. The newest, hottest star. The actual details of the assault are scant, including what, if any, conversations Leo and Wren had about it beforehand, but the emotional toll it took on Wren eventually coalesces into a very similar sex scene playing out between her and Ashley, with the roles reversed, Wren’s heinous attempt at regaining any semblance of control in her life.

More for housekeeping’s sake than anything, I also feel compelled to mention that I’ve written a number of Wangxian fics where the concept of “consent” is purposefully blurry, because Wangxian, as a pairing, are like… crazy. There are so many crossed boundaries and wild sexcapades in MDZS that are very fun, but also flirting intently with sex pest territory. I’m not here to defend it, just to note that I enjoyed it, and the majority of my more recent Wangxian fanfiction usually deals in one way or another with the absolutely fucked up & in love ‘no-no-yes’ dynamic they have. MDZS is also very funny, so a lot of this is at least a bit tongue-in-cheek on the part of the author. However, as fanfiction is wont to do, a lot of mine is like, “yeah but what if it was less funny?” I wrote many tens of thousands of words exploring their sexual dynamic in more serious ways, and investigating Wangxian’s relationship with consent, power imbalances, and how their personalities and histories impact it.

So I guess if I ever need to point a finger at why I became so interested in writing about fucked up consent dynamics, blame Wangxian.

I give a lot of consideration to the placement of rape/sexual assault in my stories. And by consideration, I don’t mean I sat down and brainstormed the most PC, least problematic way of doing so. I didn’t approach these plot points thinking how important it is to address stereotypes surrounding victims, ‘perfect victim’ narratives, or highlight failures of the American justice system (especially hilarious considering in the source material, Wangxian live in ancient fantasy China where magical powers are real). As I’ve mentioned previously, Don’t Worry has lots to say, but at the end of the day, it’s a story first. From a writer’s point of view, rape and sexual assault are neutral plot points that can be deployed as necessary to make the story work, just like any other. At the risk of sounding like the world’s biggest asshole, these are also really interesting, complex story beats that offer unique insights into your characters, your world, and the themes of your work (if done RIGHT!!!).

From a real alive woman’s point of view, I read the previous paragraph and my response is:

:|

I wouldn’t have written what I’ve written if I didn’t think it could stand up to scrutiny. Novels aren’t PSAs. Writers and other creators have some duty of care when it comes to what they produce, but that duty is so individualized and personal and contextual it would be useless and maybe even harmless to even try to come up with an authors’ hippocratic oath. This is a situation that every party involved (author, reader, publisher, distributor, media coverage, etc) needs to come at in good faith, critical thinking caps on, and not everyone does. In fact, I’m sad to say, hardly anyone does. This blog post is basically my own personal duty of care. Where my creativity, compassion, and writing ability all comes together in some version of an author’s statement. My own overlong TOS that no one ever reads.

What really grinds my gears is that the stigma of writing rape/sexual assault should almost exclusively be aimed at men. Women can and do perpetuate harm against other women, including when it comes to discussions of abuse and sexual assault (just see Amber Heard for example and how she was treated by both women and men, by far one of the most upsetting, surreal, and outrageous sagas I’ve ever seen play out in front of me) but they do so under patriarchy. How often are female writers in media caught writing sexy beat-off rape material like in Game of Thrones? Not very. Switch to the world of fanfiction, and the numbers flip. In large part because fanfiction is skewed heavily female, but also, an exhausted, weary part of me thinks, to cope. There is so much fanfiction out there about rape and sexual assault (visited upon female and male characters, though keep in mind it is almost exclusively women writing it) that has clearly been given no consideration beyond, “this is hot and sexy”. ao3, wattpad, tumblr, it’s there, in huge numbers. I’m not a scientist or doctor, but anecdotally, and keeping in mind the overwhelming percentage of victims of rape are female, what is actually going on here? There are women who have been assaulted, using fanfiction as a way to process their trauma. Or, and this can relate to the first, women who live in a world that holds these types of assaults up as hot and sexy and they have fallen in line, whether they know it or not. Some may argue there is a third possibility: some women, in a vacuum, genuinely find this hot and sexy. I have chosen not to engage with this argument because a) we don’t live in a vacuum, and b) the health and safety of all women is more important than the kinks of a select few, and while I and no one else can stop them from acting on these desires, they should proceed with extreme caution, especially when engaging with male partners, while also taking time to reflect on why they have this kink in the first place, and if it’s not in fact a case of one of the first two reasons.

Even with the above taken into consideration, the most visible instances of rape and sexual assault used as plot points in a misogynistic fashion are perpetrated and (in cases like TV or movies where there are multiple people involved in the production) enabled by men. But even on my own, I’ve wrestled with whether my being a woman who has not been raped/sexually assaulted means I am ‘allowed’ to write about it, oftentimes in fairly gratuitous, complicated ways. Obviously, being a victim of sexual assault is not an identity in the same way that sex, sexual orientation, or race are identities. It’s less a matter of appropriation and misunderstanding than it is the pop cultural and real life misogynistic context it exists in. I don’t want to do it ‘wrong’. But then again, how can my work, written in good faith and with due consideration be ‘wrong’ in how it depicts victims of sexual assault? Especially because implying there is a wrong way to do it implies there is a right way to do it, which just circles back around to idea of there being good victims and bad victims when in reality, there is no good and bad, only a perpetrator and a victim.

For all the reasons outlined in this post, I was trepidations about writing about sexual assault. I did it anyway. Originally, it was meant to be “texture” in Wren’s past (same goes for a moment on the lips, actually). Not to say it wasn’t a significant event in her life, just that the actual story didn’t revolve around it. One of the interesting things I’ve found while writing about sexual assault is the extent to which it takes over a narrative/character. Obviously, sex and sexuality are big parts of everything I write, but it’s been a surprise to me both times (with moment on the lips and Don’t Worry About It) when sexual assault as a character note ends up taking on a much bigger role than the “texture” I mention above. Which is such a strange position to be in, because I feel somehow like I’ve both oversold and undersold the impact of sexual assault on a character’s life. In a way, this reflects the reality much better than any other approach, because the aftermath of any assault will inevitably be messy. There is no clean-cut minty fresh way to recover from being raped. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back as if I’m the only writer who’s figured this out, but I do find it both realistic and difficult to reconcile the concept of an assault as a life-changing event that also, at the end of the day, is just one of many life-changing events strung together over the decades, all of which will affect you in one way or another.

Writing Wren’s assault by John West was complex, both emotionally and from a storytelling perspective. As of this post being published, Don’t Worry hasn’t concluded yet, but I don’t feel like I’m spoiling anything by saying this event, while significant to Wren as a character, remains in the background of Don’t Worry’s narrative. It feels almost tactless to say, but I am very glad I let this particular plot point cook for as long as it did. There’s certainly an element of revelation to it, as what happened doesn’t become fully clear until about 75% through the novel, but the understanding that something has happened to Wren is obvious from early on. There is tension in that period of knowing/not knowing what’s happened that is used as a tool to put together a compelling narrative. It feels, again, a bit ghoulish to congratulate myself for successfully foreshadowing a rape reveal, and yet… here I am. My most generic defense is it felt right for the story. Don’t Worry is not a story of one woman’s courageous #metoo fight against an obvious Harvey Weinstein stand-in and how, as a result, she liberates women everywhere. Wren refuses to know herself. Wren refuses to take anything seriously. Wren refuses to let anything hurt. The narrative decision to withhold the rape reveal until the 75% point was meant to reflect Wren’s own minimizing of the event. Wren doesn’t spend every day dwelling on the many bad things that have happened to her. She doesn’t sit around thinking about herself as a victim, or a survivor, or anything in that realm. In fact, John West’s name appears only nine times in a novel that is over one hundred thousands words long. His absence looms larger than his presence ever could.

The feminist backlash against how sexual assault and rape are depicted in pop culture (and how society responds to it in the real world) is still an ongoing battle that unfortunately will never end. I hope my sympathies and solidarity for this and the continuing (and also never ending) fight for women’s rights are obvious in my writing, both in my original work and here on this blog. In fact, I kind of wish I cared about it less because the weight it puts on my shoulders is immense and unshakable. The weight it puts on my writing is, also, immense and unshakable.

At the same time, I’m not an activist, a sociologist, a philosopher, a politician, a scientist, or a doctor. I’m not responsible for policy, or public health, or proving a thesis. At best, I’m an advocate. But what I really am is a writer. As far as I’m concerned, a writer’s goal should be to craft the best story they can. And part of crafting that story is sitting back and asking yourself, “What do I have to add to the discussion?” Is there even a possible scenario where a thoughtless rape scene is part of a larger and successful story? Is the assault happening on-screen? Is it in the background? How is it described (or, if onscreen, shown)? How is it moving the story forward? Is it excused? Is it between main/secondary characters, or completely random one-off characters? How do the world and the characters in that world react to it? How does it fit into the larger themes and context of the story? Are you confident that depicting the violent subjugation of a woman (assuming the victim is female, as most are) is worth whatever larger point is being made?

Something tells me the Game of Thrones guys didn’t ask themselves these questions. Something tells me the men who have used rape as a cheap storytelling device have not asked themselves these questions. Something tells me that women’s fear and pain and vulnerability are an aphrodisiac to men before they are a character note.

It seems I’ve answered my own question. Of course I’m allowed to write about it. Anyone is allowed to write about it, even if not everyone should. I’m allowed, not because I wrote about it in any specific way, but because I thought about it, in depth, and how it would impact my story and my character(s) and my themes, just like I would with any other significant narrative element. It’s not exactly in my lane. But it sure feels adjacent to it.

It’s awful to sit here and think about how much of our perception of rape and sexual assault has been warped by sexism and misogyny. How we have to have endless conversations and play word games about whether the women who have been assaulted are “victims” or “survivors”, as if changing the terminology changes the crime. The endless, endless discourse of what constitutes rape/sexual assault, to consider the perpetrator’s future prospects when reporting, the humiliation and pain and trauma, potential for STIs and pregnancy (which, of course, vaults the woman into yet another woman-specific hellacious experience regardless of how she proceeds), the stigma, and on, and on, and on. When issues that either disproportionately or only affect women, there is absolutely no getting straight to the point. There is never an easy solution, because there isn’t an easy solution to sexism and misogyny. You can #killallmen all you want. It’s still not the answer. Our world (and I do mean our WHOLE world, not just my tiny little North American sliver of it) is built on top of a system meant to degrade, denigrate, and disenfranchise women. It is everywhere. And just one teeny tiny microscopic drop of it has come, all the way from the top, and found itself here, on this blog that, on a good day, three people read.

grandma rants about plot twists & 5g

I have a confession to make. I’ve gone digging in my mentions over the years, and have seen a fair amount of discourse about my writing outside the scope of ao3 stats. This involves social media posts across multiple platforms and also, hilariously, a goodreads author page (which I have no affiliation with, for what it’s worth). I out my embarrassing ego trip because this is how I learned that multiple people hate the “twist” in the dean winchester beat sheet. “Twist” is in quotes, because what some would call the unexpected plot development approximately 80% into the narrative, I would call… a plot development. For anyone who doesn’t know, care, or remember, the “twist” in that college au is that Cas isn’t a normal college student at all, but working undercover as a member of an ornately wealthy media conglomerate run by his family in order to suss out the hacker (Dean’s best friend, Charlie) who stole a bunch of money from them and hire her. Essentially, the entire plot is revealed to have been a job interview for Charlie. The devil you know, you know?

Now, the twist people don’t like isn’t that Dean is the b-plot of his own story (hence the title, which also draws on themes of how debilitating the pressure to follow societal scripts can be ((SCRIPTS, get it??)), and, very loosely, follows the generic save the cat screenwriting beat sheet), but that Cas wasn’t just a regular joe-schmo college kid. Ignoring the fact that Cas being exactly as he seemed would’ve made for a very boring story, I’m more interested in the accusation that this so-called twist came out of nowhere.

This inability to see the very obvious twist (aka plot development) incoming is not the result of any one thing. The main reason I can see why people wouldn’t clock it is that overly long college AUs don’t usually have plots. The mind craves consistency, and a large portion of the fanfiction-reading audience wants their tropes straightforward and easily digested. However, I would be remiss to not mention how terrible our collective reading comprehension has gotten. That tumblr post from years ago about pissing on the poor seems only more relevant as time goes on and the internet infiltrates more and more aspects of our lives.

In a vacuum, the plot point that Cas isn’t who he says he is gets spelled out in glaring neon letters. To the point where I was worried it was too obvious and almost eyeroll-worthy at how heavily I was hinting.

Turns out, my concerns were unnecessary!

Hint after blatant hint that something weird is going on with Cas is dropped. Literally from their first meeting, Dean’s instincts regarding Cas are, “Something’s up with him,” the joke of course being he’s right, but he’s not right for the right reasons (gay panic). Har har. Cas takes mysterious phone calls. Dean overhears mysterious conversations. Charlie “off-handedly” mentions her hacking exploits multiple times. There’s a whole not-very-good sideplot with Cain that Cas reacts weirdly to. They run into one of Cas’ old marks who flips out at him.

Maybe the most obvious is that this storyline follows the arc of Cas’ first season on the show— he’s being controlled by his creepy weirdo powerful family and only at the end, once it seems like he’s fully brainwashed by them does he figure his shit out and throw his lot in with Dean and co. With a tiny bit of his season 6 betrayal sprinkled on top for some seasoning.

This all seemed very straightforward to me, but not everyone. And those comments have stuck with me since I first saw them and they made me reconsider what a “plot twist” even is. I really like the wisdom that an ending is surprising but inevitable. Or as I often think of it, I always try to ensure my stories earn their endings, which is a very similar philosophy. This isn’t saying every single reader is expected to predict exactly what is going on— the specifics of the twist/plot development are unique to the story, and also part of the fun. A lot of people guessed Cas was in the mafia, which is a relatively common trope in deancas AUs (presumably because of the complex familial obligations inherent in the trope, but also hilariously in part because Misha Collins is some amount of Russian), which, based on context clues, was an acceptable guess, and I assume quite enjoyable when that guess was close, but not exact. Surprising, but inevitable, right?

And yet, should a twist not be the same? Surprising, but inevitable? Earned by the story that preceded it? Unexpected maybe, but surely a good twist lays the ground work with appropriate foreshadowing? The concept of a twist at this point in the cultural zeitgeist feels hokey. Like in a dumb action movie where you’re pretty much playing roulette to see which character is going to turn out to have been evil the whole time. Or the entire final season(s) of Game of Thrones (which is unique in the sense that you could also discuss it as an adaptational failure on behalf of HBO, but that’s another discussion). Or in a crime drama mini series where at some point you get the inevitable montage of potential suspects doing suspect-y things and maybe they’re really in on it! Though probably not. But also, is that a red herring and not a twist? Or maybe red herring falls under the twist umbrella?

One of my favorite thrillers is Shutter Island. Man, I love that movie. It’s also a movie that is based entirely on a “twist” (that I am about to spoil). However, I’d argue it’s a good movie and an interesting twist that, upon re-watch, earns it. Turns out, US Marshall Leonardo DiCaprio who is supposedly investigating a missing person at a remote psychiatric hospital is literally the inmate running the asylum as part of a radical new therapy! Wahey! Had the movie been made with the viewer in on it the entire time, it would have been a completely different film. Instead of noir gumshoe Marshall Leonardo DiCaprio investigating a spooky missing person’s case on a moody island with his aw shucks good ol’ boy partner Marshall Mark Ruffalo, we would have the ominous Dr Ben Kingsley and his employees running around like chickens with their heads cut off as leo distresses other patients and blows up cars. Not exactly the same vibe, right? Maybe that’s a key component to a twist—were it told from the “untwisted” point of view, it wouldn’t really work. Certainly not in the same way as the original.

Who is in on the twist? Maybe the hokeyness of a twist comes from duping just the viewer, as opposed to the viewer and the character(s). For example, one of the most bizarre “twists” I’ve ever seen comes from a terrible Netflix show a few years ago that got cancelled after one season. You may remember it—it was a starcrossed teen lesbian lovers vampire romance called First Kill, which, UGH, don’t you wish it had been good based on the premise alone. Unfortunately, it was not good. No chemistry between the leads, terrible acting, bad writing, bad worldbuilding, Elizabeth Mitchell?? Nothing against her—I was just surprised to see her.

I digress. The twist. To this day, I remain baffled by it. For the first three-quarters of the season, the two leads (vampire hunter/vampire, respectively) live in a world that is not just implied to not know about the supernatural presence amongst them, but in fact is made so clear by the meta of the show that I never even once considered any other possibility. It was just like, okay, this is a Supernatural/Buffy style setup where the general public is not aware that vampires are just runnin’ around town. All good.

And then an episode ends with the “reveal” that the public actually… does know about vampires? And have known all this time? Despite none of said general public referring to the many supernatural events at have been happening around town since the beginning of the season. Like, it was implied to be this huge secret that is one of those heartstring-tugging tradeoffs that our noble protagonists make in order to preserve normie life. BUT THERE IS NO NORMIE LIFE AND FOR SOME REASON NO ONE MENTIONED IT UP UNTIL LIKE EPISODE SIX OUT OF EIGHT???

I can’t truly articulate how insane this made me, because the show both treated it like a twist, but also hadn’t set up the twist whatsoever so it truly felt like it came out of nowhere and made me think I was having a psychotic break from reality. No one in-universe was surprised, but I sure as hell was. It was baffling to me in a way even the worst TV often isn’t, because even a show like Supernatural, at its worst, understood the most fundamental storytelling techniques of making sure the audience is aware of what’s happening onscreen in front of them.

Maybe you just had to be there. I’ve been upset about this since 2022. Maybe this is the thing that finally did me in and made me realize so much of what’s being made in a post-COVID world is little more than those neural-net brainrot images that almost look like recognizable objects, but in reality are just AI-generated garbage scraped from the bowels of the internet and smashed together in the world’s most evil hadron collider.

But maybe that’s just bad storytelling. Can a twist be done so ineptly it can no longer be called a twist but simply bad storytelling? Are all twists just shit, and any “good twists” are simply good storytelling?

It’s weird because in the grand scheme of things, this doesn’t matter at all. Sometimes definitions are a bit mushy, and in some cases, that’s totally fine. And yet, now that I’m writing about it, I feel compelled to find a specific distinction between the two. I feel deeply unsettled that something so fundamental to our understanding of storytelling cannot be easily defined, despite its prevalence in so many of the narratives we consume.

We’re entering, “grandma, did you forget to take your pills again” territory, but think about the real life version of this that plays out in front of us, over and over. The way dipshits like trump can become obsessed with one phrase, one nickname, one chant, one echolalia, over and over, and regardless of the truth, it becomes the truth for an entire demographic of the general public (lock her up, build the wall, etc). It’s a twist, but it’s a real person in the real world trying to twist reality into something it’s not (and succeeding in frightening ways). This utter breakdown in the importance of definitions, what is true and what isn’t, has seeped into our feeds and social media and streaming networks and content creation and newsrooms in ways that I don’t know if we can ever recover from. The way we (the royal we) continue to enable the spread of misinformation and the eroding of language and truth as we know it feels like a never-ending death knell of critical thinking, narrative control, and our integrity as a species. 

The collective damage COVID did to our psyches and society as a whole, pushing us farther apart and deeper into radicalized online spaces, confining us to our homes/apartments for months on end while the world seemed to spiral faster and faster out of control with every passing second of the 25/8 doomscroll, fucked us up so bad, in so many ways. The fact that one of these ways is that so much more of the escapism on offer sucks in sometimes incomprehensible fashions is so minor, and yet, here in this blog post, has me ranting and raving like every guy on a 5G forum. The rot has spread. We are all in the sludge. What do plot twists have to do with any of it.

You know how people have their bingo cards now? “Wow, Katy Perry detonating an H-bomb over Wisconsin was NOT on my 2032 bingo card”, and so on. “Not on my bingo card” is just another way of saying, “didn’t see that coming!” We’ve entered a space where art no longer imitates life, but we are imposing our understanding of art and cultural narratives onto life. Which is very worrying, since life isn’t art— it’s just life. That’s why we have art in the first place, to help us cope with being alive. Vice versa-ing this, claiming that life imitates art, is a bad idea, but it’s not a surprising one, given the current state of affairs, where everything and your mother is monetizable (I mean literally… you know how many YouTube shorts I’ve seen where ancient, stooped-over grandma keeps getting a camera shoved in her face by her grandchild making bank off her? More than you would expect!). Consider this: how many shows that have predicted real life events predicted events that aren’t shitty?

When everything exists to generate profit, money is truth. More money, more truth. Netflix churns out so much garbage on what feels like a daily basis, and fucking how? They just recently got into hot water for creating AI images of the subject of one of their true crime miniseries, What Jennifer Did. All non-fiction content skews the truth to some degree because they are making an argument, and that’s how arguments are made, but surely this is less skewing, more skewering, when you are literally trying to alter reality.

I don’t have stats on this, but keeping in mind that this post is technically about plot twists, think about how much skew(er)ing so-called “true crime” or other non-fiction content goes through in the editing room. Every episode needs to end on a cliffhanger. There will be red herrings and twists and other detective ephemera and CSI-speak thrown in, because they aren’t depicting the truth, they’re depicting what people have been proven to watch, and as such, what will make money. This is way less of an issue for fictional shows, but when you enter the non-fiction realm and (theoretically) have a responsibility to the truth, people generally expect, y’know, the truth. But if your plot twists and cliff hangers are more important than the truth (if your money is more important than the truth), then where does that leave you? Your audience? Their brains?

The ethics are questionable. The definitions are questionable. The artistry is questionable. I feel like a surly op-ed writer complaining about those damn kids or whatever else about today’s world that I don’t understand, that scares me and is incomprehensible to me. Then again… that incomprehensibility is the problem! So now I don’t know. At least op-ed writers get paid.

To bring things full circle (wonky as said circle may be…) I think the only way to muddle your way through this is to wield your media literacy like it’s a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire and you’re in a zombie movie. It may be impossible to peel back every layer of misdirection and misinformation, especially these days, but at least you can bludgeon your way a little bit closer to the brain inside that maybe, possibly hasn’t rotted away completely? Or at the very least, ignore the apocalypse altogether and take the long way round.

Something that people may find interesting in the context of this post is a bit of dean winchester beat sheet trivia: For the first thirty thousand words or so, I had Cas’ storyline written as him already having left his evil media conglomerate family, he had made the break from them, and was planning to embark on normie life when he meets Dean. Eventually I was like… something isn’t right with this. And it was the fact that that completely obliterated the most obvious character arc for Cas, that his decision to leave should be a result of the events of the story, as opposed to something that happened offscreen and before the narrative even started. Had I continued in that original vein, the story would have been completely different, completely boring, and, potentially, much more enjoyable for at least some portion of readers. Funny how things work out sometimes.

book recommendations :)

I decided to take a bit of a breather after last week’s fairly heavy post and write something a little lighter on the heart, but don’t worry, my trademark irreverence will still shine through, grating as ever!

As a kid, I read (and re-read) voraciously. As a teenager, I read fanfiction. As an adult, I read (some of) whatever my instructors told me to read.

Reading for pleasure (beyond fanfiction), was something that I struggled with, and still do to this day. I think there is very strong anecdotal (and I’m sure scientific) evidence for our dwindling attention spans hugely affecting our ability to read. Not that we literally can’t, but that reading is one of the few activities where you entire attention is devoted to that one thing. You can’t read and scroll simultaneously like you can with other common downtime hobbies like watching TV/movies or listening to music.

I’m not a book purist at all— this will be apparent in my recommendations. The people who are “book people” and performatively gasp at dogearing the pages of a mass produced paperback and treat every book as if it’s a sacred text is like, a little much for me. But I do feel like losing my love of reading is indicative of a much larger phenomenon that I’ve been fighting against the past few years, namely falling slave to the endless scroll. Even though I deleted all my social media ages ago, the scroll still has me in its clutches. Youtube shorts, Pinterest, and even lurking on Reddit have caused me to spend endless hours consuming the most inane (or AI-generated) drivel possible. I may not be talking to or engaging with other people, but I am still participating in what I consider to be the increasingly harmful culture of the social media scroll. Technically, I’m reading on Reddit, but at the same time, let’s be real. That doesn’t count. It’s not anti-reading, but it kind of feels like it.

The joke here is that I wrote a book, when it feels like I can barely read one. One of the things I’ve learned since pursuing hobbies in the real world is that like anything else worth having, they require work. That may seem counterintuitive, but it only seems so because the internet and the algorithms within have convinced me that gormless mouthbreathing while the computer tickles the pleasure centers of my brain is the same thing as actively doing something. A few years ago there was that meme about having a smooth brain, referring to someone with a particularly dumb opinion or showing a lack of critical thinking. I’d argue that the thing that caused my brain to be smoothest of all was living my life in such a way that I’m even aware of said meme’s existence.

On and off over the past few years I have tried to read real books again. Fanfiction, while fun, does not qualify as a “real” book. Not only is it amateur fiction helmed by unskilled writers, but it rarely contains the elements you would associate with published novels. There are exceptions to this rule (and lots of published novels suck), but by and large, fic is enjoyable, but does not fall under the category of “book”. This isn’t a bad thing. They’re just different.

I thought if anyone reading this blog has gone through similar struggles to me, and also enjoys my work or my thought processes, may also enjoy knowing what I like to read. This comes with the huge caveat that what I read and what I write are often very different things. I can be very particular (but not necessarily picky, if that makes sense) about my preferences, especially when it comes to genres/topics/themes that are meaningful to me. This is where I would say I tend to embody the concept of if you want something done right, do it yourself. There are lots of personal neuroses tied up in this approach, but if nothing else, at least I try to walk the walk.

Anyway, here are some books I like!

• Tana French’s entire bibliography - if you like detective stories (or mysteries), Ireland, and incredible prose, give her a go. My favorite is the second book in the Dublin Murder Squad series, The Likeness (also one of her few novels with a female protagonist). If I could fully absorb one author’s prose-writing ability, it would be hers. I’ve always felt like my own prose is not particularly strong, so reading prose like Tana French’s is both a breath of fresh air and also very aspirational for me. Despite her elevated literary talent, her work is so unpretentious and human while also offering complex characters and an often unflattering and authentic look into the underpinnings (and underbelly) of Irish culture. She’s one of those authors who is internationally acclaimed but also no one seems to have heard of her. Read her stuff (and don’t watch the TV adaptation of Dublin Murder Squad, it sucks)!!!

• We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix - I’ve read a number of Grady Hendrix’s books, and this is by far my favorite. I love the protagonist and I love that it’s about a metal band and their weird devil music. There’s something about incorporating creepy music into a horror novel that I find very intriguing. Similar to horror movie monsters, the less you see the better. Or in this case, the less you hear. I think this is technically billed as a horror novel, but it’s not very scary. I think what really makes this book memorable for me is how much I fell in love with Kris, the main character, especially because horror protagonists are often so forgettable. WOO KRIS (also, nothing to do with the quality of the writing, but all the various cover art I’ve seen for this kicks ass)

• The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell - not a ton to say about this one beyond thinking it was super creepy, and I love when books are creepy enough to be creepy (I know that sounds like it should be a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many horror novels aren’t actually scary). I usually don’t care for books that jump around in timelines, but there was something about how neither of the timelines in this book were in the present that really worked for me. Basically, if you want to be creeped out, this is a great choice.

• The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson - one of, if not my favorite book since I got back into reading as an adult. It’s a coming of age story (a genre I rarely pick up in adulthood as, similar to YA, I feel like I’ve aged out of the target demo) and I couldn’t even pin down exactly what about it hit me so hard, but it really resonated with me. I’ve read a number of Craig Davidson’s horror novels written under the pen name Nick Cutter, which I mostly like, but this one was a lot more personal and emotionally hard-hitting (and not really a horror).

• My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh - Do I have to say much about this one? I think it did the rounds pretty thoroughly back when it came out. If you’re a depressed, cynical woman, read this and feel feelings, most of them not good, but definitely self-reflective.

• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - This is a horror novel that even my fairly strong stomach found a bit grotesque. It’s a slow burn, but once things get going, they really go.

• Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid - I think this is another one that got a lot of press, so I probably don’t have to say a lot about it beyond the fact that it was a really engaging read. There are scenes in this book that, as someone who really struggles with secondhand embarrassment, made me want to crawl under a rock forever. Which, of course, I mean as a compliment.

• Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton - You ever read the first page of a novel and think, “this author is so much smarter than me I don’t even know if I should keep reading because it would only be insulting to her??” That was the majority of my experience with Birnam Wood. The way this novel skewers well-meaning but ultimately self-centered leftists who fight over split hairs was like… almost too accurate? Like Such a Fun Age, there is one scene in particular that makes me want to shrivel up like a dried out sponge when I think about it (also in a good way). This is also one of the few novels where I don’t mind the multiple character POV as the writing was more than strong enough to carry it. My only negative about Birnam Wood is that I really disliked the ending. I see what Catton was going for, but it just didn’t work for me. It felt like the end to a satire, and while there were absolutely elements of satire in this novel, I thought it did itself a disservice by ending like it did since it had done do much fantastic character work leading up to that. But again, I wouldn’t be surprised if I was just too dumb to get it.

• Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson - I’ve really gotten into microhistories (non-fiction books about the history of one specific topic or thing) over the past few years, and I think Consider the Fork is my favorite so far. Learning about how the land and available resources shape food cultures feels like such an obvious conclusion, and yet somehow was also something that had never occurred to me. One of the things I really enjoy about microhistories is how they showcase the cycles of human behavior, as well as how those behaviors are impacted by external factors, which is really well illustrated in Consider the Fork. To be honest, that showcasing can also be really demoralizing and enraging to read, but it’s extremely interesting from a psychological point of view. Other microhistories I would recommend: White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf by Aaron Bobrow-Strain, The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Deborah Blum, Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween by Lisa Morton, Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances also by Lisa Morton, and, if you feel like you can handle some extremely gruesome descriptions of radiation sickness, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore.

• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - I don’t like Mike Flanagan’s work (except for Oculus, which is great, and Hush, which is pretty good) and I didn’t like his adaptation of Hill House. I eventually got around to reading the source material and was blown away. It was a really good novel, and it was extremely lesbian to boot. Like, to the point I was like, how was this allowed?? I know the concept of what actually constitutes homosexual behavior has changed a lot over time, but phew, this one really threw me for a loop. I didn’t realize just how lesbian Hill House was because I just assumed that was added in the Mike Flanagan version in the name of 21st century representation (and like… the way the Hill House adaptation was done is SO weird because the two female characters who have really intense romantic tension are siblings in the adaptation? I haven’t seen any of the other versions of Hill House so I can’t comment on those, but what a bizarre choice by Flanagan, because one of said sisters still is very much a lesbian…), but yeah, no, I am very surprised that Hill House doesn’t get talked about more as an example of early lesbian fiction, regardless of whether it was considered so at the time of publishing or not.

• The September House by Carissa Orlando - I read a lot of haunted house novels (and watch a lot of haunted house movies) because I really like haunted houses. Many of them are generic and unmemorable, and I expected more of the same from The September House… except I ended up really liking it! Another surprise is that novels about mother/daughter relationships are not usually my cup of tea (not for any nefarious reason, I’m just not usually drawn to them), so I enjoyed reading one that resonated with me. It was also a lot funnier than I was expecting, and I tend to be a pretty tough nut to crack when it comes to comedy.

• Where They Wait by Scott Carson - There are probably enough horror novels on this list that you’re like, oh she really likes horror. And you would be correct! But my joke is always that horror doesn’t really like me back. Most horror is crap, but I continue reading the genre because I know there’s diamonds in the rough out there. I’m actually in the middle of a personal challenge where I’m going alphabetically through my local library’s fiction titles (horror doesn’t have its own section, but at least the books have HORROR stickers on the spine) and checking out every horror novel I see that seems remotely in my wheelhouse and I haven’t already read. There have been a number of duds, but Where They Wait was one of the first ones I pulled and I ended up really enjoying it! It’s not perfect— Scott Carson is kind of like Stephen King if he were actually picky about what he wrote (this novel is even set in small town Maine)— but I am a sucker for horror novels that revel in atmosphere, deal with folklore, and have interesting premises, but are also still pretty traditional in execution. Similar to We Sold Our Souls, there are also aural elements at play that clearly I enjoy in my horror fiction. I also read Lost Man’s Lane by Carson which I didn’t like as much (very King-esque/IT-esque coming of age), and am now reading another of his called The Chill which I think will end up being more in line with Where They Wait, and therefore more to my liking.

And… fin! I think this list makes me look like a much more impressive (and wide-ranging) reader than I am. This list has been cultivated from the last half decade or so, so it’s not like this is just from the past month or anything. I used to use Goodreads, but now I keep track of everything I read in a notebook, with a sentence or two review if I feel so inclined. I felt like this was a better way to catalog my thoughts on any given book, as I didn’t have to worry about competing with the other chuckleheads on Goodreads to see who could write the pithiest review (and get the most LIKES! on a BOOK REVIEW WEBSITE! we live in HELL!) So now I can write little notes for myself that are very boring like, “not for me” or “learned a lot” without feeling like I’m somehow letting someone down. Also, reading Goodreads reviews should be investigated for its effectiveness as a torture tactic. Imagining how reviews for Don’t Worry About It would look on Goodreads is incredibly funny and agonizing.

Should I talk about booktok in this post? Probably not. I don’t actually know much about it other than that it exists and is… a lot. But once again I have fantasized about what Don’t Worry About It would look like in the world of booktok. I don’t know if the denizens of booktok know or care about lesbians fucking, it seems to be very Colleen Hoover and Reylo-centric, so maybe it’s best if those streams never cross. But, like, it would be really funny. Imagining Wren’s tits splayed across the #booktok #spicy table at Indigo or Barnes and Noble. Or, like, including it on the “diverse voices” table during pride month.

Okay, post over because now I’m playing the aw-shucks martyr and that’s enough of that. Also, I wrote this entire blog post in one sitting because I was procrastinating doing some more reading. Embarrassing.

Also, I am always taking book recommendations, especially horror or microhistory!! hit me with ya best rec.

on lesbian sex

note: this blog post contains spoilers for chapter 28 of Don’t Worry About It!!!

Sometimes, I struggle with being a woman. Sometimes, I worry I am a woman first and then a person, as in, my personhood gets “womanwashed”. I worry that my entire life is going to be lived through the marginalized experience of being a woman, and maybe, possibly, through an accidental gap in that emotional baggage, I will occasionally view a person with a personality and thoughts and feelings and hobbies and likes and dislikes that are detached from “woman”.

What’s funny about this is I’m not suggesting that women need to be any certain way or have any certain personality to be women. On my good days, I am a woman regardless of what I do. Bad days, other days, many days, I feel that Margaret Atwood quote from a book I’ve never even read down to my bones:

Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.

In the sex positive world of fandom and the choice feminist world of liberal politics, there is no home for me. I struggle and I worry about being attracted to women. I feel all of the stereotypical things that lesbians feel about being attracted to women; predatory, guilt, hesitance, uncertainty. There is nothing revolutionary about being attracted to the people who have spent their entire lives being told they are supposed to be attractive. What is attraction? Other than a can of worms, I mean. Politics? Science? Biology?

Part of my (unsuccessful) pitch for Don’t Worry About It was its “titillating” nature. And guess what? I felt bad about that, too, despite the fact that lesbians are humans and most humans enjoy sex. Sex sells because culturally, we’re all prudes. You know how it goes. However, I also pitched it as an exploration of lesbian desire. A bit schlocky, maybe, but not incorrect. And a much kinder interpretation of my intentions.

I don’t know what to do when it seems like the line between exploitation of women and an honest, overdue examination of their sexuality grows so thin as to be nonexistent. I don’t know what to do when the majority of people (of women!) would simply say depicting lesbian sex and “owning it” is, in fact, the most feminist act a woman can participate in. That presenting female bodies (already considered commodities) in a sexual manner is empowering and nothing else. I don’t know what to do as a woman who is attracted to women when I think about what it means for women to be attractive.

For fun (and to torture myself) I have often daydreamed about what a film adaptation of Don’t Worry About It would look like, and then I inevitably get to the part where it would be almost impossible to depict it onscreen in a way that feels both honest to the source material while not being disingenuous to its themes. Were it to go all out, like, full frontal, there is still a real woman who would have to play Wren. There is still a woman who would get paid to be on display for all to see, while spending the rest of the narrative wrestling with the concept that as a woman, she is meant only to be consumed, who copes with this by consuming other women in return.

These thoughts were fairly frequent while I was writing Don’t Worry About It, especially during the not insignificant number of sex scenes. Because I really did want to write an exploration of lesbian desire. But also, on a much more primal level, I was invested in writing about lesbians fucking, because it’s hot. In a way, these goals are contradictory. In a way, these goals feel like they cleave my mind in two. In a dark, dirty way that makes me feel very bad inside, I feel like my attraction to women is in competition with my support of womenkind.

In a way, it is not only Wren who is the one in the chair.

I understand why a lot of women have embraced the idea that attractiveness = empowerment. It is really hard to spend your whole life being told to be hot, then suddenly feminism swoops in and says, actually, you don’t have to be hot! Your attractiveness does not define your personhood! And then companies and marketing departments swoop in to capitalize on that, switching their mission statement from “this makeup/clothing/skincare/whatever makes you fuckable” to “this makeup/clothing/skincare/whatever empowers you”, and then, just like that, you can be fuckable and empowered. The best of both worlds, and the only thing that had to change was a slogan.

You might be thinking this applies to normies only, but have no fear, I was there when the tumblr crowd decided the new cool thing was to be the “hottest person in the room”. And maybe tumblr’s version of “hottest person in the room” is more anti-establishment than normie world. And the “queer” (quotes used because I personally do not use this term) version of “hottest person in the room” is similar to that. Trust me, as someone who has recently been introduced to the absolute horrors of online dating (don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it) being deeply hot is still deeply engrained in womankind’s collective consciousness.

Cause at the end of the day, regardless of sexual orientation, you’re a woman, and you need to be fuckable.

And that makes it really hard to write sex scenes where women fuck each other without feeling like I am contributing to my own subjugation. A woman with a man inside watching a woman. Turning any women who read it into voyeurs, participating in the evergreen watching of women, judging them, and their attractiveness, and their hotness, and their fuckability. An endless cycle from which there is no escape, let alone an opportunity to actually discuss or explore women’s desires in a way that doesn’t, in some shape or form, circle back to how much they are desired by others, even themselves, or the man inside themselves, forever watching.

The fandom scales started to fall from my eyes when I realized that spending the majority of my time in that environment meant endless discussing, analyzing, and fantasizing in some form or another about men. Not just men, but gay men, fully eliminating women from the equation. In a way, it’s just so much fucking safer. As a woman and a lesbian, I could pretty well erase myself from existence by proxy. And sure, we all played the game of including da ladies, whether it was through performatively stanning more-than-tertiary female characters or including them as (friendly or otherwise) exes, friends, and family, which is all well and good. But they existed, as always, to fill in whatever empty space the male leads left. So how easy was it for me to convince myself I was being normal about women and also being normal about my sexuality while simultaneously erasing both from my life.

(Sidebar: i know there are small pockets here and there of weirdo gay women online who hungrily and exclusively consume the tiny sliver of lesbian content out there/stan for random lesbian rarepairs, and honestly more power to you).

I’m sure there are women out there who do not carry this psychological weight in the same way I do. I envy them. I ignored the Woman anvil hanging over my head for a long time before the rope got cut and it squished me like a cartoon character. For a long time, I wouldn’t and couldn’t admit that I shared in the same oppression as every other woman. I wouldn’t and couldn’t articulate why girl power, body positivity, and choice feminism, even when obviously well-intentioned, never sat quite right with me. I pretended like every time I passed a reflective surface, I (the man inside) didn’t watch myself in it. The idea that my life will always suck just a little bit more because I’m a woman is intolerable and axiomatic.

I tried to capture this amorphous feeling in Don’t Worry About It, especially in the sex scenes, and especially in the sex scene in the most recently posted chapter (28). The strap sucking scene lived in my head for a long time before I got to this point in the narrative. I also changed my mind multiple times on how graphic to make it, and how far Wren and Ashley should go (for the sake of the narrative or my anxieties above? Sometimes it feels impossible to decode). For a while, I was convinced the furthest I could take it without it feeling needlessly gratuitous was the almost. I’m pretty sure by the time I got to this point, I had underestimated just how much Wren and Ashley want to fuck. It’s important for themes to drive characters, but my personal philosophy is that it’s even more important for characters to drive narrative.

Bloviating aside, navel-gazing aside, the narrative won. Wren has a lot of sex and Wren and Ashley have had a lot of almost-sex. Speaking of cleaving my mind in two, it is very strange to think all of the above, while also understanding that the story takes precedence over everything. This is a novel, not a pulpit. I’m not here to convert you, preach to you, or convince you of anything other than the fact that Don’t Worry About It is good. Everything else beyond writing a good story, no matter how worthy of discussion, takes a back seat. The narrative doesn’t grind to a halt because I feel conflicted about Wren getting her pussy out.

I think it’s fairly obvious at this point that Don’t Worry has things to say and points to make. But it’s not only about those things and points. It’s about Wren. Everything else is texture that enriches the story. Writers will always leave fingerprints on their stories— that’s just the nature of art, for good and for ill. There are pieces of me, conflicted as they are, sprinkled throughout Don’t Worry About It, for good and for ill. But Wren and her heart and her brain and her pussy and her autonomy are the center of the story. She certainly isn’t doing a ton of handwringing about wanting to fuck other women… a little. But not a lot.

Don’t Worry, in my mind, occupies a strange space between more on-the-nose feminist works that are blatantly about being a woman and character driven literary fiction that has less to say about external politics than internal ones. I think that’s fairly emblematic of my struggle described above— what feels like the forever tug-of-war between facets of my mind, of my genre, of my identity and my politics, of my writing and my characters and my themes. Part of being a writer is meshing all of these things. And I hope that as I gain experience both in writing and in life, that divide I feel between my work and my self can finally be bridged.

In the meantime, maybe just install some monkey bars or like, a human-sized t-shirt cannon?