Category: Stories and Me

Redefining “Which Quarantine House” Memes

Posted on by Kai Raine

I’ve been seeing a lot of “which quarantine house would you choose?” memes. If you enjoy these, then great! I’m not here to rain on your parade. Nothing to see here.

Speaking for myself, these memes are a little underwhelming. Just because a house contains your favorite dog/character/books/etc. does not mean you will enjoy being stuck there for weeks on end. In general, I would want more information and context.

So, on this night plagued by insomnia, I decided to take one such meme and make up a flash fiction about each one.

 

  1. Sherlock makes a bunch of derogatory comments about women in general, applying them to the two specific women he is trapped with. Hermione is irritated at Sherlock’s attitude toward her and Elizabeth, but also can’t help but want him to acknowledge her intellect, because she grudgingly admires his. Elizabeth Bennet locks herself in her room with a book and some instant ramen and reminds herself that murdering her housemates is inadvisable. When the quarantine ends, every one of them hopes fervently to never meet either of the others ever again.
  2. Jane and Harry are shy about interacting, but Scout’s restlessness awaken Jane’s governessly instincts, and they bond. Harry is slower to open up, feeling a little out of place for a while, but eventually Scout explodes an egg in the microwave, and in the ensuing hilarity, the ice is broken. They settle into a comfortable companionship that becomes a lasting friendship.
  3. Jo and Snape get off on the wrong foot, and spend the first week constantly at each other’s throats. Eventually, sometime in the second week, they realize that their energy is much more useful put into bedroom activities. Gandalf steals all the blankets and couch cushions and builds a pillow fort that is magically soundproof. They all go their separate ways after the quarantine, relieved to be free.
  4. Initially, Jon and Gatsby hit it off. Gatsby and Anne get off on the wrong foot from the start, so Anne spends most of her time avoiding the both of them. Into the second week, Jon and Gatsby’s quick friendship is already fraying, as they realize they don’t have as much in common as they thought. In this tension, Jon finds Anne sulking in a corner, and she reminds him of Arya, so he talks to her. They bond, and while Jon does not want to alienate Gatsby, Gatsby ends up feeling like the odd one out anyway. Jon remains in touch with both after the quarantine, more often with Anne at first, though their correspondence fizzles out. His correspondence with Gatsby is more constant, but never stops being distantly polite.
  5. Khal Drogo attempts to kill Edward Cullen out of boredom, and is alarmed when his target proves to have superhuman powers. Clearly Cullen is a witch, and war must be waged. Bellatrix passes the time by playing double agent for both sides, pitting them against each other until her conniving proves no match for Drogo’s bloodlust.
  6. I have no idea what happened here as the only member of this group I am familiar with is Tintin. I suppose they have adventures. Sounds fun!
  7. Hazel, isolated from her family for no good reason, dies in accordance with Murphy’s law. Louisa is traumatized. Margo blocks the whole experience from her memory.
  8. Draco attempts to recruit Quentin and Gus as his cronies. When this fails, he tries to turn them against each other. When this fails too, he sulks in his room while Quentin and Gus become friends, bonding mostly over their mutual distaste for Draco.
  9. Neither Lord Voldemort nor Khaleesi submit to a measly quarantine, given that Voldy is immortal and Khaleesi can throw herself into an autoclave if necessary. They immediately identify each other as a formidable foe and set about building armies for their imminent war. Frodo’s survival instincts kick in immediately upon glimpsing them, and he hides in the cellar and goes undiscovered.

I hope this gives somebody entertainment. It certainly gave me some.

If anyone else has turned these memes into stories, please send me the link! Or if you want to do so now, send me the link or share your stories in the comments!

Stay safe, everyone!

The TLTLBU Sequel Woes

Posted on by Kai Raine

I’ve had a number of people approach me about when I’ll be releasing the sequel to TLTLBU.

The truth is…I have no idea. I’m in a PhD program right now, nothing to do with fiction writing, and that really should take precedence.

That said, I’m a firm believer that nothing should be prioritized above personal happiness. (And it’s much easier said than done. I cannot articulate how much I want to qualify the statement even as I type it.)

And for a long time, writing has made me happy. Writing. Not editing.

But these days I don’t stick to writing very long. Even on a day I decide to dedicate to writing, I’ll spend a meager amount of time writing, then to a book, or a walk in the park, or a recipe I’ve been wanting to try, or some yoga.

And that’s okay. I spend a lot of the time I’m doing other things thinking about the book, and that’s an important part of my process, too. The writing part goes faster after I’ve marinated my mind in the characters for a long time.

But I have this gnawing sense of guilt, about everything: too slow producing a paper for my PhD, too slow producing this sequel to a book I published 2 years ago.

Today, I was sorting through my files, and realized I couldn’t find the draft of Remind Us of the Truth that I started after releasing TLTLBU. Instead, I found a draft that I haven’t touched in 7 years: different title, slightly different plot points, but it’s a complete draft, prologue to epilogue.

And I’m presented with a dilemma.

Because I could just edit this draft into a serviceable sequel.

But it feels like cheating. I gave it a quick skim—it’s been so long I don’t even remember what’s in it anymore—and it’s much what I remember. The plot points need refining.

I know the way I edit. “Editing” this draft will mean I will in practice be rewriting the whole thing. But the skeleton of the existing outline will still be there, even if no one else ever sees it.

It’s not the same as the outline I had planned on in more recent years. There are 3 storylines—Gwen, Esther and a new character. Gwen’s storyline in this draft is obsolete, but I did have a storyline for her in the newer outline. The plan of the newer outline was that Esther and the new character’s storylines were musts for this book. Then there were three other storylines that I would write, and decide later how many, if any, of them belong in this book rather than in a later one.

If you’re wondering if this approach is how I came to have a complete draft of book 2 five years prior to publishing book 1…yes, that’s exactly right. I’m much more comfortable playing around at the editing stage if I know for sure that the progression will carry on into the next book.

But now, my time is finite. Editing this draft for the 2 storylines I’m keeping, plus rewriting Gwen’s storyline, and the 2 others from scratch, could work. It would definitely cut the time between now and the beta reader stage.

And yet.

I can’t help but fear that something would be missing from the story if I did it that way. With Esther’s storyline as the backbone of this next novel, I want that to be as polished as I can make it.

And can I do that with this draft as my jumping off point?

I have no idea.

Thank you, if you’re one of the people awaiting the sequel. It means a lot to me that there’s anyone out there other than myself who’s interested in following Esther and Gwen and Deric in their adventures to come.

Isobel’s Quandary

Posted on by Kai Raine

My mother and I used to read a lot of Eva Ibbotson romances.

And by “a lot,” I mean “all of them.” It was my mother who started giving me straight-up romances, instead of my usual fantasy or mystery novels with romantic subplots. She tried this several times—I don’t know if it’s because she liked romances, or because she thought I seemed to get the most out of those romantic subplots. I suppose we’ll never know, since I never thought to ask.

Whatever her motive, she tried several times—and most times, those attempts failed miserably. She first introduced me to romance novels when I was about eleven or twelve. These were novels like teen romance movies from the ’80s, revolving around high school and cliques and peer pressure, and that one perfect boy who comes and turns the main character’s life upside down.

I wasn’t yet at the point where I could form the opinion of “disliking” a book. I don’t remember having any particular negative feelings. I merely didn’t feel like reading more things like that. I do remember not understanding why there were weird initiation rituals to cliques, and wondering why in the world anyone would bother.

I was fifteen or sixteen when my mother finally found my sweet spot: that sweet spot was Eva Ibbotson.

I’d already read and loved Journey to the River Sea, Which Witch, The Secret of Platform 13, and other such stories. One day, my mother handed me The Countess Below Stairs. I took one look at the author name and started reading.

I was hooked. I was weirdly into Russia at the time, and the historical fiction with an aggressively tame, G-rated romance was right up my alley. The countess-turned-servant angle was also pretty fun. Somehow, that book managed to push all my buttons: it gave me angst without getting dark; deep, world-rocking emotion without getting wordy or descriptive about it; and a main character whose misfortune didn’t bring her down, who seemed to go around making other people’s lives just a little bit brighter.

I have to say, I think that part of the appeal of Eva Ibbotson romances are that they aren’t merely romances. The two main characters overcoming the obstacles that keep them from being together when they first meet—that’s just the frosting on the cake that is these stories. The cake is the sheer richness of story, full of side characters with little stories in their everyday lives.

In the case of The Countess Below Stairs, it’s in the neighbors, the staff, and both families. These books are populated with characters with joys and sorrows and dreams and hopes and fears, and Ibbotson weaves them all together into a stunning tapestry that always leaves me looking at the world around me and feeling it a little brighter.

I bring this up because recently, I’ve been thinking of A Company of Swans. This is the story of Harriet, the abused daughter of a misogynistic professor, who runs away from home (and, indeed, England) to be a dancer with a ballet company that goes to Brazil. Here she meets Rom, the second son of an English noble who left home in a rage after the love of his life, Isobel, was offered a choice between Rom with his love or Rom’s brother with his title and money—and Isobel chose the latter.

My mother and I used to talk about this book, once upon a time. I was young, and the uncaring, status-obsessed Isobel didn’t seem worth much thought. She was a villain, for the purposes of the story. Obviously Rom had been mistaken in her character, I thought.

My mother disagreed. She reflected that the choice Isobel made—choosing status over love—must have changed her, because she would have had to live with that choice afterwards.

Years later, upon rereading the book, I was surprised that I’d ever thought of Isobel as a villain. She’s uncaring towards her son and clearly pursuing Rom at Harriet’s expense. Yet Rom himself points out in the text—he can only pity her. I find that I pity her, too.

Of course, there’s no way to know how Eva Ibbotson intended Isobel to be read, but as a believer of the school of thought known as Death of the Author, I don’t really think it matters. I like my mother’s interpretation, because I believe that that is a true phenomenon. We make choices that we tell ourselves are practical, because they offer us what we think is supposed to make life happier, or easier; but in reality, we’re giving up something else that we’d never have given up, had we known how much of ourselves we would lose in the process.

It’s easy to look down on Isobel, I think, because we’re indoctrinated on Hollywood and Disney movies telling us to Follow Your Heart, and that True Love is the answer. It may be easy to see why giving up your true love for his brother’s status and money would cut this woman to the soul and change her fundamentally, for the worse. But despite—or maybe because of—that, I think Isobel is a beautiful lesson hidden in plain sight.

I think of Isobel a lot, these days. I say I pity her, but I don’t mean it in a condescending way, if that’s at all believable.

I have a low-paying part-time job, and have been accepted for a second part-time job starting next year. But I’m already experiencing weeks when my body simply can’t keep up with the one job plus research, plus all the other random things I decide I want to do (reading, volunteering, going out with friends, writing).

So I applied for a scholarship through my university, and they recommended me for one, which I then proceeded to fill out and complete the application.

It weighs on my mind, now. This scholarship would be from a tobacco company. The money would be good—enough to live on 2/3 and have 1/3 left over for fun, or savings. When I completed the application, I was in the mindset of, “Well, a scholarship is a scholarship.”

I spent half of this month living on meager paycheck to meager paycheck, and it was rough. So I saw the opportunity for an end to this, and I leapt at the thought.

But ever since, I’ve felt the weight of it on my mind, darkening me. I’ve found myself thinking of Isobel.

It’s practical. But if I get accepted (because I haven’t been yet, thank goodness), and I take it, what is the true cost going to be? In a physical sense, it would make life easier; but for my mind? I feel like it would cloud me up again. All the junk in my mind I’ve cleared away, the little bit of clarity I feel like I’ve finally been arriving at in this last year, or half a year—what was all that for, if I’m just going to take a scholarship from a company that I know I don’t like? Who’s actively pushing tobacco into international markets?

After all this time, sorting through all the little things that have clouded my mind and made me more a product of my environment than anything truly me—what kind of idiot am I that I think that I can accept something like this in the name of ease and time and think it won’t affect me in any bigger ways? That it can just be a paycheck and an occasional gala-type event that I have to attend? When has that type of logic ever truly worked for me? (Never. I can’t remember a single instance where it didn’t come back to haunt me.)

Practicality is only one part of the puzzle—a big part, yes, but I think I’d rather deal with the impractical solution that leaves me without such a weight on my conscience.

EDIT: I don’t think that Isobel necessarily would have been happier had she married Rom. Clearly, a penniless suitor wasn’t something that appealed to her, regardless of how much love there was between them. I do think that even if she had made that choice, they would most likely have grown apart in time and become unhappy—maybe Rom would have gone on to meet Harriet, fall for her and have an affair with her anyway, and she really would have become his mistress, just as she was convinced that was the most she could ever hope for in the story itself.

I don’t think Isobel’s mistake was not marrying Rom. I think her mistake was marrying Rom’s brother. And those are not the same thing, to me. But I also recognize that in reality, that’s probably the hardest choice to make of all. Stuck between the choice your heart yearns for and the choice your mind yearns for, saying “I pick neither” is probably the hardest thing in the world, and itself carries the risk that then you’re searching for some impossibly perfect thing to justify what you gave up for some reason you probably can’t even articulate.

Just so we’re clear.

The Irresistible Lure of Failure

Posted on by Kai Raine

Have you ever heard of the secretive, bizarre 60-hour over-100-mile race that has only been completed by 15 runners since it began 30 years ago?

If you answered no, we’re in the same boat. I’d never heard of the Barkley Marathons until this week.

When I’m tired, I often watch the Today I Found Out YouTube channel. Earlier this week, I stumbled across this video when YouTube recommended it to me.

If you don’t have the time to watch an 18-minute video, here’s the TL;DW (“too long; didn’t watch”, or a brief summation of the video): Barkley is a race that is deliberately designed to be unbeatable. From the secretive application process to the course that gets harder every time someone manages to finish, the whole thing is designed to be an Experience in Failure.

And from the moment that I watched that first YouTube video, I have been utterly hooked. It’s funny, in a way, because while I do run sometimes as a means to an end (i.e. exercise), it’s never been something I enjoy. I’m happy when I can run 5km continuously; never in a million years have I considered running a marathon, let alone one that’s 160km in the mountains.

But that’s not the point.

This race, to me, isn’t about the running. No—instead, it’s the stuff of dreams: pushing yourself to the limit for a near-impossible goal, with no reward on the horizon beyond the ability to say “I did it.”

Isn’t it glorious?

I’ve watched footage of the race taken by runners, an absolutely spectacular documentary about Gary Robbins’ attempt to complete the race, and a multitude of other sources about the race.

It brings me such joy, this race.

We as a society can be so insecure when it comes to failure.

Whether it be the validity of our own opinions, little inevitable mistakes born of carelessness or inexperience, arbitrary goals that we set for ourselves, or a wide range of other things, we can become embarrassed or ashamed in the moment or even just reliving the memory. Sometimes, we even lie or obfuscate to hide these little things.

But why?

Failure is a wondrous thing. For years, The Incomplete Book of Failures by Stephen Pile has been a staple gift item of mine. It may be out of print, but it is such a wonderful book to have around so that one can have a good laugh from time to time.

But that’s always been insufficient in and of itself, of course, because that book is more about laughing at other people’s failures than about being secure about our own.

It’s more than that, I realized recently as I read The Story of Jiro by Kojin Shimomura. This is a story of an unfortunately “monkey-faced” second son of a well-off family growing up and learning about life and the people around him. It reminded me somewhat of Anne of Green Gables, both stories being episodic stories of a particular child that expanded gradually into that character’s lifetime in stories.

The Story of Jiro and the Danger of Praise

One of Jiro’s childhood struggles is his insecurity about his position in the eyes of the adults in his family. Because Jiro’s mother was unable to produce enough milk, Jiro was raised in his early years by a wet nurse; consequently, even after he is reclaimed by his birth parents, he grows up perceiving his wet nurse as his main mother figure. Between Jiro’s paternal grandmother’s overt favoritism for both of his brothers over Jiro, and his own internal conviction that his own mother neither wants nor loves him due to poor communication between the two, Jiro finds refuge in the male adults in his family: his father and maternal grandfather. At first very rebellious, Jiro settles down after a series of events culminating in a meaningful discussion with his grandfather.

After a time during which Jiro takes care to behave himself well, including several Very Good Deeds, he is praised by everyone in his family—save his grandfather. Jiro becomes increasingly convinced that he has been shunned by his grandfather, and is just about to lash out—when his grandfather acknowledges that Jiro has done a Very Good Thing.

Jiro is at a loss at this. If his grandfather has always been on his side, then why hasn’t he been praising Jiro along with all the other adults?

His grandfather tells him a story, then, about a young Buddhist disciple. All the young disciples are trained in reciting the sutras, but most of them do so going through the motions, only memorizing the words. This disciple, however, is different. He takes the time to meditate on the meanings; to ask the monks about what he doesn’t understand, and meditate upon their answers. Because he takes the time to understand, when he recites the sutras, it is a beautiful thing to hear.

One day, a group of visiting monks arrive, and this young disciple recites the sutras for them in a ceremony. The monks are duly impressed, and tell the disciple that they have never heard those sutras recited so wonderfully. Their praise is lavish, and the disciple is utterly delighted.

And from then on, whenever he starts to recite the sutras, what comes to mind is not the meanings of the sutras, but instead the delight he felt at being praised for reciting so well. The brilliance of his recitation fades away, until they ring dull and hollow.

At last, the boy goes to the monk presiding over his temple and asks for permission to go into the woods to train alone.

“Why do you want to do that?” asks the monk.

“I can’t focus my mind,” the disciple laments. “Ever since those visiting monks praised my recitations, my head’s been turned. I am still utterly immature.”

The monk considers the disciple solemnly. “You are wise,” he says to the boy. “For where many focus on the way that a scolding disturbs the mind, words of praise are far more dangerous—but there are few who ever notice.”

Jiro’s grandfather finishes the story, and asks Jiro if he understands. Jiro does.

I felt like I was there with Jiro, a child being enlightened on something so simple—something that I almost feel like I remember hearing as a child and then forgetting because I, unlike Jiro, didn’t understand its significance.

The Gift of Failure

I’ve been learning to practice radical self-acceptance—this is my therapist’s school of thought. In learning this, failures and mistakes have been the greatest gift.

I grew up beating myself up for every failure; recounting and reliving failures hours or days or months or years past again and again. Somehow, there was a part of me that thought that failure=bad and therefore I must punish myself.

But that’s not true, I’m finally learning. Failures are utterly valuable—I can learn from them, and not just in a don’t-do-this-again sense.

It’s in learning to apologize and change my behavior without letting shame disrupt my mind. It’s in accepting that in conversations where miscommunications prevail, I don’t have to keep talking, trying to clarify as if the misunderstanding is tantamount to a lie. It’s in accepting that I can tell people things about uncertain thoughts of the future without throwing the mantle of “unreliable” over myself when I ultimately don’t choose to do what I said I would. It’s in accepting the flaws of my mind and action as things that are, indeed, flaws, but are simply a part of me and nothing to be ashamed of.

There was a part of me that always thought that if I stopped beating myself up for each and every failure, I’d lose the ability to learn from each failure.

But that’s not what’s happened.

Instead, I’m only more clear-minded: “I didn’t like how I said that. Oh well. Next time.” And often, I do change. Maybe not immediately, but gradually and surely.

And I can do these, because they are failures. Praise and success are, as Jiro’s grandfather’s story portrayed, harder to recover from. I had no words for it before I read that book. Praise sometimes paralyzes me as I fear squandering the good will I’ve somehow built up. Other times, success makes me lazy until I am failing once again and must fight my way back up.

Circling Back to Barkley…

Is this why the idea of a failure-guaranteed race so appeals to me? Maybe. I can’t say for sure. All I know is that I love the idea of Barkley.

Something contestants are almost guaranteed to fail. But they try it anyway. They wish each other five loops with grins. They push themselves and push themselves, and many try again and again.

It’s a bizarre little event.

And I love the idea of it.

Counterbalancing (a Tiny Bit of) Our Biases

Posted on by Kai Raine

Apparently yesterday’s (by an hour) post was more personal than I was quite ready for…

Let’s detox with something less personal!

Counterbalancing a Tiny Bit of Our Biases

An Unofficial Crash Course in Cognitive Science for Writers: Pt. 1

Have you ever reflected on a memory, and brought it up with a family member or friend who was there, only to find that they remembered it very differently?

Some of this has to do with how the brain stores and rewrites memories; some of this has to do with perspective and past experience. But it also has to do with a word I secretly hate using: bias.

We all are biased. Maybe that bias isn’t necessarily fixed for extended periods time, but at any point, our brains can only be in one state. As a general rule, I find it helpful to think of it this way: we’re made up of all our biological predispositions plus the heavily weighted events that steered us through our development, plus every millisecond of experiences since then.

Personally, it’s a little overwhelming if I dwell on it.

My father always said, there is no wasted time. In the world of neuroscience, this is true. Every thing we do or don’t do, everything we say or don’t say, everything we think or don’t think is part of the process that creates paths in our minds. For instance, if we “hate watch” things, or read articles that make us angry and worse, subsequently dwell on these things, we can end up reinforcing those anger-inducing pathways. We can end up forming a sort of pseudoidentity around something that, ostensibly, we would have been happier if we could have dismissed from the start. Love and hate use the same circuitry in the brain, after all, though hate apparently retains a semblance of rationality.

When I was learning the flute, my teacher used to talk about the “erosion” of mistakes. For every time I made a mistake, she would say, I had to play that part correctly twenty times to counterbalance the mistake. Any less, she said, and the mistake would take root in my fingers, and I would be doomed to make it again.

As I started studying cognitive science, I felt a growing marvel at the wisdom of my flute teacher. Because, we learned, while science in the past was determined to map the brain by finding the specializations of certain locations, that’s not quite how it works. Some parts of the brain are specialized, yes, but by and large, brain “mapping” is about networks. And habits—not just patterns of how we act, but the thought patterns underlying them—are networks that become engrained in our brains. Not only are they hard to break; even once we do break them, it’s incredibly easy to set off that neuronal pathway again.

Those thought habits? They’re part of what create biases.

If your first thought is that you can control your mind, adjusting for every unwelcome stray thought the same way my flute teacher taught me to adjust for mistakes—sure, by all means, if you can do that. I can’t do that, but I’m not foolish enough to believe that no one can.

For me, I had to embrace radical self-acceptance. Learning not to blame myself for anything: learning to observe, and adjust my behavior. Accepting that not everything is in my control, even in the confines of my own mind; that sometimes, I’m an asshole and that’s okay. It was radical self-acceptance that is teaching me to see my own biases and thought-habits more clearly, and—slowly, but surely—adjust them, where I want to.

Racial Bias

Since we’re talking about writing, we have to talk about some form of bias. I have to admit, I don’t usually talk about “race”-based bias, because in my experience, “racism” is too narrow, and gives a pass to a lot of similar thought patterns that would be covered if I only chose the umbrella of “tribalism”. So I do that. But that doesn’t mean that I discount racial bias—it just means that it’s one of many types of bias that I try to be aware of.

For the purposes of this post—recognizing and correcting our own biases—it must be largely irrelevant what other people are doing. The only extent to which other people’s biases matter, in this context, is how they affect us: if someone else’s tribalism is making us more tribal, for example.

But if we’re talking about studies, “tribalism” is too broad: it can be seen in nationalism, ethnocentrism, and so many other types of “ism”s. I’m opting to talk about race, here, because there is plenty of research on the subject. So, if you’re wondering if you might be racially biased, you could try taking this test. (If you want to take it, then for the sake of doing so without hearing about my experience, please take it before reading the next paragraph.)

To be honest, I’m somewhat suspicious of this test, since I felt like I knew exactly what the test was looking for, and therefore had the power to control it. I messed up on a single image the first time I took it, and that resulted in it giving me the result that I was biased; surprised that it would yield that result after a sample size of 1, I tried taking it a second time, messing up in the same way once, but then also messing up in the opposite way once. It told me that I was unbiased, that time. I admit to being slightly annoyed at that, since I could easily have made that “correction” the first time—I felt like it was a coin’s toss whether I chose to let the mistake go or try to “correct” it.

But at the end of the day, only this truth matters: race is just a social construct. Scientific research has even offered cause to question the validity of medical profiling of people by race.

Now, what this means for a member of society is very different from what this means for a writer.

As members of society, it means we must make an active effort to move past any sort of bias—which brings us back to having to recognize and counterbalance our own biases. Here, I don’t have that much advice to offer, except to read some cognitive science studies on bias and wonder how it might apply to various aspects of my life.

A personal example… For me, this involves going into the dark corners of my mind that I’d really rather leave untouched, and trying to recognize whenever I’m developing a bias; engaging in conversations that make me feel uncomfortable and upset with people who I feel don’t care about my perspective, and trying to understand theirs anyway. To me, it means leaving any preconceptions about who is worth talking with and listening to behind—trying to find a way to connect with people that I might otherwise shut out.

A scientific example… There was a study conducted in which participants would wear gloves, causing their skin to appear a different color than it was; and this showed that participants were more likely to show empathy for someone with a different skin color afterwards. This article provides an excellent rundown of the study and the background.

But as writers, our challenge is a slightly different one. Because while at our core, we may be the same, our experiences are often different. A person used to being treated fairly may not see or believe another person’s story of unfairness in the same setting, for example—a pattern all too common on the news.

An optional writing exercise

Look back on one of your experiences of an event, person and/or place you have lived through—preferably a mundane one that you have only ever considered from your own perspective. Reflect on other, very different experiences that people might have had. Perhaps this involves asking siblings or friends or relatives about their perspective of this event, person or place. Notice the differences from your own memories. Try writing a short story about that event, from someone else’s perspective—real or fictional. Then, after you’ve written it from the other person’s perspective, write it from your own.

An optional reflection: Has your perspective of your own experience changed?

(Just a note: there are no right or wrong answers, here. It’s just an exercise.)

To be continued…

I think. If anyone found this helpful and wants more, please let me know in the comments or an email or a message through the site’s contact form.

Here are some resources that I think are extremely helpful in understanding how the mind doesn’t necessarily work in the way that we might expect.

This book is about subconscious decision-making, and how we often end up rationalizing decisions that our brains have made for reasons unknown to us.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (and Other Clinical Tales) by Oliver Sacks

Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran

Variable Comforts

Posted on by Kai Raine

A Talk about “Writing Diverse Characters”

I gave a talk at the Japan Writers Conference about writing diverse characters. Like I said in my post leading up to the conference, I chose to go in with practically no preparation. I ended up so tense that I foolishly rehearsed talking about certain things—and those things were, predictably, the things I ended up wanting to talk about. I wanted to not prepare to avoid biasing myself in favor of certain topics, you see—but by rehearsing some things and not everything (which is of course impossible, since I couldn’t have known going in what people would want me to talk about), I biased myself in favor of talking about those things. For better or for worse.

Considering how much it stressed me out to try that format, and how I basically failed at my goal of giving a talk unbiased by my own preferences of topic, I was a little surprised that so many people seemed happy with the outcome.

The idea was that by asking people to introduce themselves early on, they would have a sense of which of each other to turn to, and I could also tailor what I talked about to what I thought it would help people to hear.

There are things I would do differently if I chose to do it again. But considering I felt like I had no idea what I was doing going in, I think it went pretty well!

There’s one thing I didn’t get to that I regret: talking a little about bias. I said that I operate by trying to understand my own biases, and the way that I think, and trying to balance that out. (Edit: I do intend to make a less personal post eventually, with links to more resources! This is not that, though if you follow the links below, some do lead to resources that may end up referenced in that post, as well.)

It’s a simplistic explanation of a complicated subject, so I’m going to write a post, now, explaining some facet of my mindset.

Discomfort in Comfort

The bottom line of what I’m about to describe is simple: I’m not comfortable being comfortable.

In essence, I suppose I try as much as possible to be aware that I’m only 1 of 8,000,000,000. I’m nearly nothing; and in fact, I aspire to be nothing—to be a blank canvas on which any story can write itself.

Obviously, that’s impossible. Complete absence of personality and preference and bias is probably unhealthy. Probably, everybody has a degree to which they’re comfortable leaving their own skin in their minds; a point beyond which things start to feel wrong.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I live in a state where almost everything feels just a little bit “wrong”. I don’t know if it’s a factor of how I grew up—always an outsider, always the Other. I don’t know if it’s because of the mind games my cognitive scientist father played with me as a child—teaching me to exercise my imagination. I don’t know if it’s a predisposition, or PTSD, or maybe even a benign temporary state that I will grow out of.

Whatever the case, nothing makes me more uncomfortable than feeling like people are trying to accept me into their “group”. It’s not that I don’t want to be in a group; it’s not even that I don’t join the group.

But I am conscious of the group thinking; of any points where it becomes us vs them; of the ways that I adapt to the group. I’m also always conscious that the very same process that brings us closer together is also driving us further away from the rest of the world.

From a more selfish perspective, I’m also aware of the fact that the group might, at some point, decide—with good reasons that my mind can easily produce—that I don’t really belong.

Flexible Opinions

Opinions, to me, are just things in a box that I carry around. Sure, there are some that I’m more attached to than others, but I see them as tools in the constant search for better ones. So I’m that annoying person who, when surrounded by people all echoing the same opinion, will ask for an explanation from another viewpoint in order to see how this opinion is expanded and defended.

I have been conscious of and highly suspicious of my “brain holes” as well as everyone else’s, to the extent that I start to simply set myself at opinions opposed to whatever I’m reading or whomever I’m talking to, if the person or writing seems too ingrained in one particular perspective. If I catch myself thinking, “This just sounds right,” I immediately go looking for data to disprove it—or, if I don’t have time for that, just find a counterpoint opinion and send my mind to time-out over there.

Often, I end up debating these opinions I’ve randomly selected on a sort of a reflex—I’ve taken this stance, and feel I must defend it.

It’s not a lie, exactly, because I believe it’s my opinion in the moment. But these come and go so quickly—in a matter of days or hours, sometimes.

This doesn’t necessarily mean I’m always out for a debate. That gets exhausting. And there are times when I want validation. But then I usually go to people whose honesty I trust, and sometimes tell them that I’m feeling vulnerable and don’t want opposition.

So there are settings where I want and maybe even need validation.

That preface is a counterpoint to my next generalization: verbal validation in particular can make me feel uncomfortable, in some settings. Maybe this is one of the reasons why I’m so at ease with the idea that some people really don’t understand or like TLTLBU; I’m more comfortable trying reading or listening to someone’s thoughts to try and understand what put them off my writing than I am simply accepting that someone really liked my writing.

So…What?

So what? What’s the point of any of this? Am I saying people should try to be like me? No. Of course not. I think the world takes all sorts of people to function, and if everyone thought like me…yikes.

I’m not sure what the point is, actually.

Someone said that good writing comes from extremes, and I should be trying less to be balanced.

Maybe that’s true. There are certainly ways to interpret those words—not necessarily how they were intended—in a way that would be productive.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention in this post that I’m a recovering codependent: I used to use my flexibility of mind to mould my thoughts as closely as possible against another person’s, whom I liked. This doesn’t mean I’d just agree blindly with everything they’d say; but I’d find an angle that worked for me that was mostly in alignment with other people I liked—or, often, in alignment with what they thought I did or should believe. I couldn’t tell you which came first—my malleable mind or my codependent tendencies.

But the keyword there is recovering. That is no longer who I am.

So who am I, really? What lies at the core of all this malleability? I’m honestly not sure. I used to think there was nothing there. I’m starting to realize that there is a person there; but right now, all I know about her is that she doesn’t like thinking in absolutes, and she likes trying to understand people on a deeper level than mere surface logic.

I only just realized a few months ago that I think in specifics but often speak in generalizations. I used to think that this was what everyone did—until I realized that some people genuinely seem to think of certain things (usually places and people and other things they’re not familiar with) in generalizations. I’m not sure what to do with that. I feel like if I were speaking in specifics, I’d come off as extremely pedantic, and be tedious. (I don’t just mean I’d be tedious to listen to—I mean I’d be tedious talking.)

I don’t know what to do with it, but it’s a new fact about me that I know am aware of—and in being aware of it, I’m also aware that this isn’t necessarily the case for others.

But not knowing who I am beyond a few things doesn’t hurt my writing—it’s a factor that can (and does) help bring it to life.

Off to the Japan Writers Conference!

Posted on by Kai Raine

I’m flying to Otaru for the Japan Writers Conference today!

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, and I’ve been a mess all day today: rushing out of a room to go do something only to realize that I left behind something crucial.

But most things are done. Just 2 things left: submit my scholarship application (yes, I’m officially back in academia as of this month), and do my mandatory health check. Then it’s off to the station to catch my bus to the airport for a dizzying sequence of transportation that will get me to Otaru past midnight! (Yikes…?)

I deliberately haven’t prepared anything for my presentation at the conference. I thought I’d just make a list of memories and angles for myself, and have that with me, and turn my “lecture” into a more participatory sort of thing, where I cater what I talk about to what the audience wants to get out of my talk. It might be a terrible idea, but given the topic I chose, I figure that this is better than preparing a powerpoint presentation to bombard audiences with.

I’m in the last slot on the last day, so I’m also expecting that there won’t be that many people.

So—if I’ll see you in Otaru, I look forward to meeting you!

If not, wish me luck!

How to Write an Asexual Love Story—and Why

Posted on by Kai Raine

I’m trying to write an asexual’s love story right now. No, I don’t mean a non-sexual love story. There will in fact be a bit of sexual content, because the protagonist has to learn that not wanting to have sex, not enjoying the rush of hormones, is not the same thing as either prudishness or some sort of virtue.

That said, this is a complicated thing to write, and I want to talk a bit about it.

The Manuscript That Demands to Be Written

Let me back up. I just wrote a quarter of a novel manuscript in half a week.

This wasn’t something that I had on my list of planned projects. I’m not even sure that this is something that will ever see the light of day, beyond a handful of carefully selected beta readers. But it is something close to my heart, that I feel strongly compelled to write.

My biggest challenge in the writing of this story is attempting to create a compelling love story narrative where the love interest—as well as the reader, perhaps—writes off the protagonist as a potential romantic partner very early on because of her sheer disinterest in sex.

This novel is about many things, but one of those things is the story of a woman who tells herself that she is simply picky about partners—who comes to accept that no, it’s not the partners that she’s disinterested in, but the sex and the hormones. She is capable of experiencing attraction, but finds it deeply unpleasant. The rush of hormones, the way it turns her head, the giddiness, the blind dedication—these things that make the start of a relationship the best part to many people are what make her averse to it. She would rather just skip to the part where the attraction is muted and the relationship is characterized by comfortable familiarity.

Is this proper “Asexuality”, as per the LGBTQA+ label? Does it matter? Not to me.

Because this is my sexuality that I’m trying to portray. I label it asexuality. I used to label it demisexuality. At the end of the day, you can call it whatever you want. I’m contemplating the idea of throwing all the labels into the story at different points, to highlight all the possible angles I’ve considered it from, or just dropping them all and letting the readers decide for themselves.

Other Asexual Love Stories

Here’s the thing—fan fiction is the only place where I’ve ever read love stories of the asexual/aromantic/demisexual variety. Oh, certainly, I’ve read books or seen movies where you could interpret a character to be one or more of the above, but these aspects are subtle, and possible to ignore. Not so in my story.

Well, the fan fiction template is not much use going into writing an original novel. Fan fiction can do these things for a few reasons:

  • When reading fan fiction, people tend to search for the pairing that they want to see. If you post an asexual Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy fic —and just to be clear, I’m making this up, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it exists—then some Harry/Draco shippers will read it. You don’t have to go through the trouble of investing your readers in the characters and their relationship. Their interest comes pre-packaged the moment they click on your story.
  • Thanks to the advent of Archive of Our Own, people also search fan fiction by tags. So if you write, for example, a Monkey D. Luffy/Trafalgar Law fic where they are asexual and aromantic respectively, people interested in asexuality and aromanticism will find it by searching those tags. And even though the reader may not necessarily be a Luffy/Law shipper, they might go, “Huh, I know and like those characters, and this is an intriguing idea. Let me take a look.” And once again, you’ve hooked them purely through premise and knowledge of a fandom.
    • And this one is a real fic that I liked very much—it gave me a lot to think about. You can read here if you’re interested.

It’s harder to try and build this from the ground up. I have to get the reader deeply invested in the characters, as well as a developing relationship—which is challenging enough in ordinary circumstances. But I need the reader to be invested in a relationship where the two characters in questions are of “incompatible orientation” according to conventional wisdom. And I don’t want to do this by deliberately tricking the reader. I hope that the protagonist’s emotions, and her lack of self-awareness will effectively obfuscate her…unusual feelings about sexuality for long enough that the reader has time to get to know her and become invested in the main relationship.

But I’m not counting on it.

“But Asexuality Is Just Self-Denial”: Proving a Negative Through Story

When I talk about my asexual characters—because this isn’t the first—I get a lot of flack for it. I’m cashing in on a trend, I’ve been told. It doesn’t really exist, people have said to me. That asexuality is a temporary state of people who simply haven’t yet met “The One”; that asexuals are simply deluding themselves due to society’s brainwashing; that asexuality runs contrary to biology—these are all views that have been shared with me. Not necessarily with regards to my character, mind you. Some of these have been said to me, about me, even before I adopted the label of asexuality and applied it to myself.

Obviously, they are wrong about me, and so I disregard these opinions with regards to my character, too.

Here’s the problem, though.

I’m trying to tell an asexual’s love story—a story where, through falling deeply in love with one person, the protagonist comes to realize and accept how deeply she doesn’t care for romance or sex. This love interest is an exception to how she has always been, and how she realizes that she continues to be underneath the attraction.

If this doesn’t seem paradoxical, let me reframe it for a second.

What I’m trying to do is basically like trying to tell the story of a female character realizing she’s a lesbian by falling really and truly in love with a man for the first time, and recognizing how he is the exception to her experience of her feelings with men.

Arguably, I feel like given the widespread acceptance of the Kinsey scale, that would make slightly more sense—in this situation, it would be a story of a woman who rates perhaps a 5 on the Kinsey scale.

Just like it’s impossible to scientifically prove a negative, it’s hard to tell a story about something that’s totally absent. But an exceptional situation that creates feelings that the protagonist has never experienced before or after, despite the contradictory stories she tells herself and everyone else about who she is? That’s something I can do.

That’s what I’m writing.

(I just have to figure out how to structure it. Just, indeed…)

On Blogging and Vlogging and All That Jazz

Posted on by Kai Raine

As you might have noticed, I’ve been dabbling in vlogs and video essays lately. Don’t worry about breaking the news to me—I’m aware that they’re not that great. I don’t think it’ll ever be my medium the way writing is. I have to script a video to be happy with it, I’m not an engaging screen presence, and I’m so out of my depths with editing. I’m still a writer, through and through.

I have been learning certain things about myself. Like how when I’m talking, I’ll often drop articles, or alternate between past and present tense, or just use the wrong words like it’s nothing.

But for various reasons, I do want to become more familiar with the process, and for certain topics, a video—if I can manage not to fail at the performance and editing part—does land with more potential impact than words on a screen.

At the same time, my flatmate Edith is a YouTuber—she’s just starting out, but takes it very seriously.

So when we decided to go hike Mt. Kawanori together back in the beginning of May, I suggested we vlog it.

We decided to alternate whose channels we’d post hikes to, and played rock-paper-scissors to decide who’d start out. I only “won” by a technicality, since we didn’t realize that we each play it differently, and after a few failed attempts Edith decided that my technical win was still a win.

In trying to pare down the video to 10mins, I realized that mostly I just wanted to keep in the interplay between me and Edith.

That’s how I am in my stories, too—dialogue and relationship dynamics all the way. Scenery? Pfft.

Yes, it’s there, especially in These Lies—it had to be. But there are still scenes where I feel the clunkiness. I find pleasure in hearing and touch and imagination; not so much in visuals. So when I write a character admiring scenery, no matter how hard I try, I inevitably feel like it’s not good enough.

So in the end, even though it was a vlog, it turned mostly into us talking. This isn’t bad, per se, but I don’t have the editing skills to back up this creative decision. So it just comes off as a video of two people talking about a hike while they hike, interspersed with miserly glimpses of scenery.

I even cut out most of the information about the hike.

We’re not explaining things very well, I thought when I was rewatching the parts of the video where Edith and I explained things. It would be much better if I write this all out. I think I’ll just write a blog post to accompany the vlog, with all the information.

I finished and uploaded the video, and started this blog post while I waited for it to upload, so that I could cross-link the two.

It was only after it was all done, and I went to sleep and got up this morning and looked at it again that I realized—the blog post with the vlog embedded in it works so, so much better than the vlog alone linking to the blog.

Oh well. You live and you learn. But next time, I’m thinking that this will be the intended format.

And hopefully, in time, my editing skills will improve, as well.

(The Start of) An Impassioned Defense of Fan Fiction

Posted on by Kai Raine

**This blog post is cross-posted from my review blog, The Storybooker.**

As a general rule, I don’t post reviews of fanfics on my review blog.

Certainly, there was one notable exception—an instance in which said fanfic was eventually published as a book for sale, incidentally.

Lately, I’ve begun to ask myself: Why is that?

This is my “dirty” secret: I read a lotof fanfic. As a matter of fact, even when I’m too depressed to do anything else, when I can’t stand up or go outside or even pick up a book—even then, I read fanfics.

It would be accurate to say that fan fiction is my comfort genre of choice. Back in the days when I had bookcases’ worth of books at my fingertips, sometimes my comfort reads would be familiar, beloved books. Alas, those days are gone, and I don’t have the means to keep many books anymore. As such, most of the books that I do still have are books I haven’t yet read or books of particular sentimental or intellectual significance to me—none of them are comfort reads. Thus, I resort almost exclusively to fanfics for comfort.

Despite having reviewed that one work fanfic on this site, I now note that I never made a tag. I still vividly remember defending my choice to review it at the start, as if it was a shameful thing to be reviewing a fanfic alongside “legitimate” books.

But this year, since I published my own book and started reviewing the works of other self-published authors, I’ve experienced first-hand that the world of self-published novels is not that dissimilar to the fanfic world. In the world of self-published books, it’s easy to wind up with a work that, especially compared to a traditionally published book, is badly in need of an editor. Choices in these stories can be reflective of the fact that the author had no one to put a foot down and tell them no—in other words, they can be self-indulgent, lacking in sensitivity, bewildering or confusing to readers, and all manner of other things not generally found in traditionally published books.

Now, this could be—and usually is—viewed as a huge mark against self-published books. I used to see it that way too. But when I read Amidst Honeysuckle, Promises and Forbidden Things, something strange happened. By all ordinary metrics of an original novel, it should have been a complete disaster: grammar, punctuation and capitalization are almost comically freestyled, the plot depicts choices and circumstances with little to no regard for the real-world psychological and societal ramifications of those things except as serves the plot, and each and every character’s physical description is listed with hair color, eye color and physique—even when said characters have little to no part to play in the story. And for about a third to half of the book, I did think it was a disaster—until something clicked and I realized, I just have to think of this as a fanfic. And next thing I knew, I’d finished it—not particularly irritated or worse for the wear. I could even see the appeal it might hold to some, even if that appeal is no longer something I can appreciate myself.

This shift got me thinking. Why did that one thought make such a difference? If I can read fanfics of a quality that I wouldn’t accept from a book, then surely the problem was never really with the quality, but something to do with my perception. Why is it that we tend to separate original fiction from fan fiction so starkly? Fifty Shades of Gray and the way it was originally published—rife with errors, barely edited from its original fanfic form except for the requisite name changes—and that patently appealed to a very wide audience nonetheless.

Could it be that hang-ups on things like grammar, story structure and psychological ramifications are an elitist way of looking at stories? At the end of the day, the thing that matters most is appealing to an audience. Are there people with whom a story resonates? Are there people who want to spend their time reading it? If a story that fails at grammar, structure and psychology nevertheless gains people who want to read it, with whom it resonates—that story is still a success.

I became a fan of the YouTuber Jenny Nicholson after I watched her read and make fun of the fanfic Trapped in a Island with Josh Hutcherson (and yes, that is the title: grammatical errors and all). This story, she exposited, had 48300 hits on Wattpad (as of the day that I’m writing this, the number has risen to 70100 hits). The fanfic is abysmal, by regular story metrics. And yet, clearly it does resonate with a lot of people—even if we assume that all readers since Jenny’s video are reading it ironically, and that before Jenny’s video, about half the readers were reading it ironically, that would still be 24 thousand sincere readers—and personally, I think that a whole 20 thousand people independently reading a story ironically seems a little unlikely.

In story critique, perhaps we spend too much time paying attention to what stories shouldbe, at the expense of seeing what is.

True that neither of the aforementioned Amidst Honeysuckle…Forbidden Things nor Trapped in…Josh Hutcherson were stories that appealed to me. Yet there are other fanfics out there that I read and genuinely enjoy. Not only do I enjoy them—I learn from them. There are fanfics that I regularly cite as being a shining example of some storytelling technique that I admire—except, up until now, I’ve always shied away from calling it a fanfic when I cite it. “This book I read once,” I’ll say instead, deliberately vague and misleading whomever I’m speaking to.

For some reason, it can seem like a shameful thing to admit, enjoying fan fiction as sincerely as I often do. I didn’t even realize how ashamed I was behaving about this hobby of mine until I started thinking about it.

The thing is, quality isn’t even that difficult a problem to get around in the fanfic world anymore. With the advent of AO3 and the filters on FF.net, looking for a high-quality fanfic is no longer the disorganized bog of senselessness that it was when I discovered the world in the ’90s. It’s easy to do a sort of crowd-sourced quality control by sorting stories by popularity. Generally speaking, if you go to a fandom or pairing you like (assuming that the number of works in that fandom or pairing are fairly substantial) and sort it by popularity—meaning by number of kudos on AO3 or favorites on FF.net—you can find at least a few stories that are well worth your time on the first page of results.

And there are quite a few fanfics out there that I adore, at a level not dissimilar to my favorite original novels.

So, I’m making a change: I’m going to be posting reviews of some fanfics. Make no mistake—these will be some of my favorites, so things that I highly recommend. I won’t waste your time talking about the mediocre (for now). I want to showcase the wonderful pieces that the fan fiction genre can produce—especially the beautiful stories I love that can onlyexist as fanfic. By which I mean, they can have no Fifty Shades of Gray style novel adaptation. Many of these stories are too intrinsically linked to their fandom to make sense if removed from that.

And that, for me, is part of the appeal.

In addition to the reviews, I’m also planning a few essays, and maybe a vlog or two on the subject of fanfic: its worth for readers, its value for writers, as well as an analysis of the positive aspects of stories that can almost exclusively come out of fan fiction.

Whether you love fan fiction or are skeptical of this notion, I invite you to join me.