A History of Failure

 

Art by Rachel A Rosen, who also designs amazing covers for books (HINT!)

This essay is not about Taylor Swift – or at least, it’s got far less to do with Taylor Swift than my last essay. But there is a connection.

It’s pretty hard to deny that even though it’s made adequate bank, Life of a Showgirl has had – at least on parts of the internet I’ve seen, i.e. my Discord channels and my Youtube and Substack algorithms – a pretty negative reaction from fans and a lot of critics. The line between “fan” and “critic” is blurrier than it’s ever been, in this current era of accessible content creation and platforming. You don’t need to be an expert for your opinion to matter; you just need to catch the algorithm at the right or wrong time.

Regardless, some people are treating the album, and Swift, as a laughingstock, and not for the first time.

Now, in my own life, I mentioned in my last essay that I was running for the local public school board, and while I managed to get over 2900 votes, from a voting turnout of about 18% and about 20k voters or so, I didn’t get a spot on the school board.

 (My shitshow of a provincial government apparently is floating the idea of just abolishing school boards anyway. If you’re Albertan, this is a reminder to make a fuss and do your best to piss off the UCP. Operation Total Recall is underway, and please check it out, because this government is attacking our democratic rights and everyone’s interests, regardless of preferred political affiliation.)

Now – my personal failure here was a disappointment, but I’ve had a much kinder reaction from people. Partly, I don’t have the expectations placed on me that, you know, a seasoned political candidate or a world-famous celebrity like Swift does. And while I’m proud that I made the attempt, there’s still a certain shadow over any effort that doesn’t bear fruit.

It got me thinking: what does failure mean?

There’s something really interesting about failing these days. Now, maybe it’s a modern problem, or maybe there’s a historical precedent here, but at least in my own English-speaking, Western cultural context, it seems to me like failure has developed this moral weight to it.

A Quick, Dirty History of Success

I’ve alluded to the basic concepts of Calvinism and gestured at the Protestant work ethic and its resulting trauma before. In a quick, dirty overview, a prominent strain of Christianity held that some people were chosen for Heaven and others simply aren’t, and the seats are limited: predestination. However, and here’s the extra nasty bit, people thought that God would hint at who was destined for eternal salvation by favouring them with success in their earthly life.

So of course, people who belonged to Calvinist strains of Christianity ended up working as hard as possible to try and demonstrate their state of blessedness. Mix that into the cultural soup of the Industrial Revolution, and you have an extremely toxic recipe for the future.

This whole belief system has kind of evolved into what’s now called the Prosperity Gospel, which is a more aggressive focus specifically on the idea that God will reward you in not only Heaven, but your earthly life, with actual riches. Immortality in a paradise of fellowship amongst loved ones and a divine parental figure is no longer enough to satisfy people who are scraping to make ends meet.

John Steinbeck did not actually say, “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” The thing that this popular misquote gets wrong is at least partly its attribution of blame. It has this implication that damn it, these poor people are just stupid and stubborn, or ignorant – if only they’d see what’s gone wrong!

That perspective glides over the extremely intensive propaganda efforts that have gone into making people believe that poverty is their own fault. After all, if you just work hard enough, you can be a billionaire too, right? Ignore the widening legal loopholes for transference of wealth, avoidance of taxation, and the inheritance chains of property, wealth, and privileged advantages that directly tie into chattel slavery and European aristocratic families, of course. It’s just about luck and working hard! Get on that grindset, girl!

Back to Failure

The thing about focusing on success and The Power of Positive Thinking, and other similar late-Victorian and early 20^th century self-help texts, is that it doesn’t really account for what the fuck happens if…you just fail. In The Secret, one of the more recent and deeply influential permutations of modern prosperity gospel, there’s a whole thing about “The Universe” wanting to reward you by giving you whatever you think about most. Of course, that means that worrying about failure will actually result in failure…because the universe is kind of stupid and bad at consent, I guess.

Perhaps, dear reader, you can see the direction I’m pulling you in. The logical corollary of the axiom that success = favour from God or the Universe…is that failure means God, or the Universe, is disappointed in you.

I haven’t seen this discussed much, but the idea lurks like an urban legend intruder beneath the bed, breathing and panting damply, evident but too terrifying to confront directly.

“Bad Things That Happen to You Are Your Own Fault”

People don’t say this out loud in exactly these words, but the implication sits there, and turns up constantly, just like that urban legend slasher. Even after #MeToo in the late 2010s, people still say and imply that one’s clothing or behaviour could have been responsible for sexual assault and harassment.

Not attaining the success you expected at work, missy? Clearly the problem is that feminism has failed, and it’s time to Retvrn to the (imagined) past mode of life. Be more…traditional. You want a family, don’t you? Wouldn’t it be relaxing to just spend time with your children at home while your husband takes care of things? All you have to do is the chores, and you already do those! Why work in addition to that?

This particular message is all over social media, popping up in different forms like mutating toxic mushrooms around the earthen cellar door where fascism dwells.

Never in this line of propaganda is there a discussion of, say, fertility problems. Despite the wide accessibility of fertility treatments in our current era, having any kind of trouble, say, getting pregnant or impregnating someone, still carries the sting of humiliation. Never mind the question of what happens if you find out that you can’t crack it as a parent *after* you have children, or the constant, pervasive fear every parent has of failing their child.

As mentioned, the dominant cultural milieu in the West is flavoured by both capitalism and Christanity. Both the wealthy and the super-wealthy benefit from having the broad working class focused on aspiration rather than justice. If people are trying to grind their way to the top, and fighting each other for scraps, they won’t target the people actually holding the reins of power and wealth. Furthermore, if people see wealth as a blessing from God or the Universe, poverty indicates either withholding of a blessing, or failure.

Failure and poverty are thus made uncomfortable housemates, necessary to each other. Any type of failure risks the danger of poverty, and poverty itself is a form of implied failure.

Let’s Make It Worse

So, this is pretty bad, right? Like if you take apart the idea that failure is always your own fault *and* a result of not being good enough for the Divine Parent (whether that’s God or the Universe), it’s pretty scary and daunting. It’s a damn hard standard to meet.

Now put that in the context of our panopticon society. Speaking of 19^th century morality that’s stabbing us in the ass, the panopticon was a prison design meant to allow constant surveillance of prisoners, to make sure they were reforming properly. Constant scrutiny and an absolute destruction of privacy is clearly the way to stop someone from hurting people, right? Of course, if we’re talking about people breaking the law, we should probably allude to that whole “poor people commit crimes because they’re poor” thing that tends to happen. So basically, if you surveil and shame people adequately, it should be possible to fix their unfortunate moral defect of poverty.

The best part is, now we have the thing where user interfaces on social media treat every person like a content creator, people feel both social pressure and algorithmic pressure to post regularly. Between the data exposure required for social media and actually posting stuff about one’s personal life, we’ve developed a societal system of self-exposure and peer surveillance.

Now, peer surveillance has always been kind of a thing – people have been up in each other’s business for as long as we’ve been social animals, and in fact, other animals are nosy, too. But the current mode of peer surveillance transcends previous social models. Before, you’d have to be seen or heard doing something you weren’t supposed to; your thoughts, at least, were sacrosanct.

But now we share our thoughts as well, and present the world with an entirely new path of judgement.

And, in a world where the middle and lower class are collapsing together, rather than forging class solidarity and focusing on our mutual opposition, we resort to cannibalism, in hopes of temporary catharsis and relief. After all, if we can root out the class traitors, the “Treatlers” who still order snacks from food delivery services, surely we’ll be able to defeat our enemies, right? Somehow, people bullying each other on social media platforms has failed to trigger the revolution.

How the fuck do we fix this?  

The thing is, this situation isn’t unfixable. In addition to plain compassion and critical thinking and asking ourselves questions – should I *really* repeat this or engage with this content? Am I being too harsh on other people? – we need to practice both self-compassion and compassion towards others.

This sounds extremely boring and un-fun, so if you find yourself with superfluous hostile or mischievous energy, direct it towards the real targets: people in power. You have a right to be angry for what they’re doing to us, so write angry, ferocious letters, make art, or find other creative outlets to express your anger. People in power are so much more fragile than we think they are. We should make them scared again. For legal reasons, I am not directly advocating violent action, but I am advocating protests and strikes, and whatever forms of disruption you can manage.

Harass politicians and political figures who are trying to strip your rights away. Cover for your coworkers when they’re sick or “quiet quitting”. Ignore shoplifting customers, especially if you’re a fellow customer. Buy food for homeless people (and also just give them money). Find out what your neighbours’ names are and actually say hi to them. Be nice to random people on the internet, especially when you don’t want to. And above all else, reframe how you see failure.

What failure really means

Not everything we try to do is going to succeed, but instead of seeing failure as the end of a story, see it as part of a cycle. We can’t learn what works without failures along the way. Like death, failure is an inevitability. Also like death, it tends to be terrifying until you actually encounter it, and realise that it’s an essential part of living. In various ways, we will fail over and over – so the trick is to see how long one can keep going before the next failure; as well as to stop treating failure itself as a moral judgement on everything about us in our lives.

This is hard, slow work, and sometimes being nice to yourself is harder than being nice to other people – so turn your compassion outward; towards friends, family, and strangers, even celebrities.

(Compassion doesn’t mean blind defense, but if you don’t know the difference, maybe go spend some time sitting with that before you yell at me. There’s your first lesson: stop wasting your time yelling at random people on the internet when you could be trolling and harassing CEOs of large corporations.)

With practice at turning compassion outward, it gets easier to ask, “Would I say this to my partner? My best friend?” when dealing with negative thoughts and judgements rooted in the Christian/capitalist paradigm.

The other thing to do with failure is to see the freedom in it. If you’ve already failed, you’re already “a sinner”, and “damned” – so what comes next?

Well, actually, anything you want. If you’re already lost, why not go further? Modify your approach. Find a new goal. Instead of waiting for happiness later, find small happinesses now.  Instead of longing to be a billionaire, or waiting for heaven, ask yourself – what were you hoping for from those things anyway? To help your friends? You don’t need a billion dollars to do that. Life only gets better when you realise that the metrics of success were impossible anyway. To quote a song I like, “we’ll never get to Heaven ‘cause we don’t know how.”

Now, do I actually succeed in living by all of these precepts? It’s a work in progress. But hey, the more I fail, the more I have a chance to try again.

***

A writer and artist, Michelle Browne lives in southern AB with xer family and their cats. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Find xer all over the internet: *Website * Amazon * Substack * Patreon * Ko-fi * Instagram * Bluesky * Mastodon * Tumblr * Medium * OG Blog * Facebook

What We Owe Our Fans: The Emotional Contract of Storytelling

 

[Warning: This essay contains spoilers for The Last of Us and Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as Mass Effect. I’m talking about endings here, so if you see a thing, just kind of assume spoilers are on the table. Also, yes this is late, but it’s also like twice as long as my usual posts, and I’ve been thinking about it for weeks, so them’s the breaks.]

Ending a story is hard. Hell, getting a series off the ground is hard. Of the three series I’ve started – The Nightmare Cycle, The Memory Bearers, and The Meaning Wars – only one is complete.

(I still have plans to finish the first two, but quite frankly, book 2 for The Nightmare Cycle took ten years to write…and when I was finished last year, I decided I wasn’t happy with it, and that it needs a complete rewrite. The good news is, I’m a much faster writer than I used to be, so that’s part of my plan for 2026 and 2027; to finish The Nightmare Cycle. The Memory Bearers takes place in the same world, and will involve consequences from The Nightmare Cycle, so that’s why I haven’t been able to continue and finish that series yet, either!

That and, you know, the whole “adjusting to parenthood and scheduling” thing. And the hyperfixation committee decreeing exactly what I’m allowed to focus on, and when. Wheee. But I digress severely.)

Series are hard, yo

I’m going to focus mostly on books, because that’s my primary artistic storytelling medium, but I will reference other narratives to reinforce my point, which I think is broadly applicable to most narrative mediums, including a lot of nonfiction.

There are a lot of authors out there with series that have been started, get one book deep, and then – either due to personal reasons or publishing company-imposed limitations – don’t get to finish. (I’m looking at you, company that won’t let Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant release the sequel to Into the Drowning Deep!)

However, when some authors get big enough, like George R R Martin or Patrick Rothfuss, they can set their own schedules.

Now, I wrote an analysis of A Song of Ice and Fire’s failure to launch some years ago, but the example has certainly stuck in my mind.

The thing that led to my disgruntlement, touched on there, is the issue of the Red Wedding. Now, at the start of the book series, we get a rather hamfisted foreshadowing that Ned Stark is gonna bite it. His death felt entirely fair and unsurprising. Again, intense foreshadowing.

Book 1 starts with a family sundered, and emotionally, that should mean that the end of the series brings all of the family members back together, damaged but surviving, to recuperate together. That is the emotional core of the story of Game of Thrones that holds the first couple of books together.

This is a powerful storytelling concept, and it’s also the reason the series fell the fuck apart. In book 3, when Caitlin and Rob Stark are horribly and brutally murdered, Martin threw a subversive curveball in the equation.

 However, killing family members means that the reunion is impossible before it happens. By killing off his probable king, instead of, you know, badly disabling him or injuring him in some way, Martin effectively slew the emotional core of his own story.

It’s easy to see the evidence; without the emotional anchoring of their protagonist family for us to cling to, books 4 and 5 are a rambling mess. Now that so many years have passed since book 6’s expected due date, it’s pretty obvious that Martin is hopelessly stuck.

 I’m not going to say he should pass the writing on to some other author because he might die soon. (In fact, you should never say that to an author; I can’t express how phenomenally rude and inconsiderate it is.) What I do think is that any remaining fans with a lingering sense of hope…need to mourn the series and move on.

By waiting too long to publish, and by destroying the emotional anchor point of the story, Martin broke the emotional contract.

What’s an emotional contract?

I hasten to add that I’m sympathetic to other authors who get partway through a series and get completely stuck, or who start a series and don’t finish it. After all, I have my own context with that.

In the current romance writing world, there’s a publishing norm that’s become so hard and fast, it’s getting ossified: genre romance novels must end happily, with the couple/people in relationships together. It wasn’t always like this, and I personally think that less predictable love stories are due for a comeback. However, it’s important to signal to people that a story may be tragic, or at least that it’s meant to be less predictable. Otherwise, readers will respond VERY poorly to a broken emotional contract.

There’s that phrase again! An emotional contract is an implicit agreement with readers to finish a story in a satisfying manner.

The thing is, this concept transcends narrative medium and genre. Whether it’s a twenty-five-part story time on Tiktok, a prestige TV drama, or a niche genre book series – the audience expects a satisfying ending.

The blowup around Mass Effect is a pretty great example of the ball getting dropped. Now, the writing was very complex there, so it was going to be hard to make everyone happy with the myriad different relationships – but by promising a happy ending with some characters’ romances, and showing the importance of teamwork and the hope of survival in previous games, the third game’s ending was in conflict with itself. Killing off Shepard might have been okay in a vacuum, but given the themes of previous games, a lot of people felt betrayed. People would even have been willing to sacrifice Shepard…if they felt more autonomy over the ending’s decisions. The backlash was so famous and so bad that the gaming company was bombarded with three-colour cupcake orders, among other forms of trolling, and eventually had to go back and remaster the ending.

Completely unrelated illustration, but it’s progress in my attempt at a year-long drawing-a-day effort.

What’s satisfying?

People tend to get hung up on specific details and what they think they’ve been promised, which is a huge issue – the amount of entitlement people have towards creative media is pretty frustrating, and that entitlement also transcends genre, unfortunately.

An emotional contract is formed in stages. You’ll all have to forgive me for referencing the Hero’s Journey structurally a bit – but I’m commenting primarily on what I’ve seen of stories that are either written or translated into English, and mostly, published within the cultural milieu of North America and Europe.

The first part is the setup, where the status quo is explained and demonstrated. Then we get a disruption, where the desire/goal is established. In, say, the game Mass Effect, which I’ve also spilled a lot of digital ink thinking about, the fundamental goal is “handle the Reaper threat”. In like 99% of romance novels, the fundamental goal is connection and union with one or more love interests. In a mystery novel, it might be the setup of the fundamental question – you know, “Who killed Roger Akroyd” or whatnot. Fantasy and science fiction can have a whole range of situations, including any of the previous questions, or others, but there’s still usually some sort of question being asked at the start of the book. (I mean, that’s why it’s called speculative fiction, really.) In a horror novel, the desire or goal is usually just survival, but horror has different expectations, and as long as the ending is satisfying, audiences are pretty tolerant of a range between happy, bittersweet, tragic, and deeply upsetting endings.

Through the plot arc or arcs, we see the establishment of stakes (i.e. the risk versus reward for a character pursuing their desire). We see hints of the consequences of not having the goal or desire fulfilled, as well as hints of what attainment will lead to. Different stories and formats have different stakes, structures, and interruptions; for instance, video games have a very different structure than a TV series, even though they’re usually both visually-focused mediums. Regardless of medium, the end of a story usually comes from either the attainment of the desire/goal, or the fallout and results of its attainment.

The problems come into play when either a) a series simply never finishes, leaving its question unanswered, or b) audiences are unhappy with the attainment.

The delicate dance of audience dissatisfaction

 A lot of authors claim to be writing for themselves, but while this is fundamentally true to an extent, writing is also a form of communication. It is possible to write entirely for yourself – if you don’t publish or share your work with anyone, ever. Communicating with yourself is still a valuable and worthwhile pursuit, but writing always represents an act of communication.

Writing is also the absolute cheapest medium in terms of raw production, which is probably why it’s so popular; it also underpins many other art forms and narratives. No matter how a story is produced, whether that’s a video game or a podcast or a grand movie, it starts with being written down.

However, the more expensive the production, the greater the weight of the audience expectations. Authors can often afford to piss off their audiences a bit more – in theory – but the greater one’s prestige or recognition, the more audiences will develop expectations based on previous works. This is unavoidable, since humans are pattern-seeking creatures, just like many other animals. And that’s fine! The existence of patterns is morally neutral, but much less so once we get into the specifics of those patterns.

For instance, in true crime narratives, there’s a common emphasis on the heroism of law enforcement. Given that I’ve gone on the record many times as being against the concept of policing, especially as it currently exists, myself and other people find this quite objectionable. Still, even true crime and other non-fiction narratives follow narrative structures that parallel those in fiction. “Reality” TV still uses a degree of scripting, and often presents unpleasant characters who eventually suffer downfalls and other inconveniences, in the morality plays of our time.

In The Last of Us’s TV show adaptation, audiences have been incredibly pissed off about the death of Pedro Pascal’s character, Joel. While shifting the focus to Ellie’s character is fine, killing Joel off broke the emotional contract of a found family. It’s okay to kill some members of a found family in a situation with multiple characters – after all, look at D’Argo’s heroic sacrifice in the big finale of Farscape, which also has a pretty satisfying ending. But when there’s only two people in the found family, killing one off…destroys the found family. Emotional contract, broken. Result? Not just a few grumbles, but an internet full of fans lashing out.

Why is satisfaction important?

Life is unpredictable, chaotic, and unorganized. Humans impose structural narratives to keep ourselves from going fucking insane and to make sense of the world. Narratives also help us articulate our desires or goals, or relay values. Stories mean a lot, blah blah blah, power of story is significant. (I’ll be dissecting the whole “power of story” fetishization in a future article, by the way.)

Basically, we crave stories so we can get something that real life seldom offers. Abusers go unpunished, loved ones leave us and don’t forgive our trespasses, and sometimes love falls apart. On the other hand, sometimes we can only make sense of our triumphs and achievements with the benefit of hindsight. Not everything in our lives is a story of perpetual loss, attrition, and entropy. Or, you can look at it that way, but you might go insane, and even the nihilists and existentialists agree that in a world without divinely ordered meaning, we have to make and find our own.

Enter the narrative.

The practical upshot of all this is simple: life is fundamentally dissatisfying, and to avoid getting lost in it, we want our stories to make sense. Having a story take a sharp left turn – for example, a conventionally plotted romance novel having a shocking twist ending that leaves the main couple forever sundered – breaks the emotional contract. Like a hull breach in a space craft, it exposes us to the deeply dissatisfying chaos outside.

Now, don’t get it twisted – it’s okay to have unpredictable endings, as long as you set the audience up for an expectation of unpredictability. To put it mildly, storytelling and its conventions have changed a lot over the centuries, as values and audience desires have changed, too. In mythology, whether that’s the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita or The Journey to the West, narratives served to organize and teach morality and apply structure from a divinely ordained perspective. Wealthy aristocrats and royalty ruled by divine right, but could be toppled if a particularly clever and righteous beggar or lower-class person proved to be their better. In this way, mythology tends to be fundamentally conservative. It’s okay for Zeus to assault beautiful women, because that’s how heroes are born, after all. (PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM NOT ENDORSING THIS REASONING; I’M JUST EXPLAINING MY BEST UNDERSTANDING OF ANCIENT LOGIC.)

The line between instructive and entertaining fiction and narratives gets more and more blurry the farther back you go. The modern era clearly distinguishes between these categories, but it wasn’t always so. Still, every story in every format sets up a promise, and has to deliver.

Promises, promises

Partly to organize the chaos of the world, both humans and social animals have come up with concepts of agreement and promises. A pack of wolves might not sit down and hash out a contract to share and divide up their kills evenly, but they have an implicit agreement to work together and share food. Domesticated dogs, cats, and other animals understand that doing a trick or obeying a command leads to some sort of reward.

A promise is inherently transactional; it means giving something to get something. The thing given in return might just be trust, but that emotional and social capital has a very real value. Audiences give us their attention and money; we give them entertainment, instruction, or a mixture of both. Again, I have to emphasize that even non-fiction follows this structure; you wouldn’t still be reading this essay, two thousand words deep, if not for the implicit promise that I’m going to explain something of interest or value.

So let’s circle back, at long last, to the beginning thesis: emotional contracts underpin all narratives, fiction or non-fiction, and creatives break those contracts at their own peril. An example of deeply satisfying emotional contract fulfillment would be, say, the ending of Return of the Jedi or Return of the King, just to choose the absolute simplest examples I can think of. In Jedi, Luke is at peace with his father’s legacy, the insurgent communal anarchist rebel Ewoks survive and escape, the Death Star is destroyed, and Han and Leia are together. It’s everything we’re told to hope for through the original trilogy. Return of the King foreshadows the bittersweet twist of Frodo’s parting throughout the narrative by showing how the Ring damages its keepers, even the most stalwart and resistant. But even so, we’re still promised that eventually, Sam and Frodo will be reunited some day in the West, aka Elf Heaven.

What do writers need to know?

Emotional contracts might be very specific (“This couple will get together”) or very broad (“This story will be completed”) but failing to fulfill them introduces discomfort and chaos. A little discomfort and chaos is absolutely a good thing, because a completely predictable narrative is boring. It doesn’t satisfy the fundamental need to create meaning and order out of our chaotic lives. Too much chaos, however, and too many arbitrary changes, result in something like season 8 of Game of Thrones, which was so widely reviled that it retroactively pretty much killed the fandom.

Metanarrative actions can also destroy an emotional contract. JK Rowling, for instance, made a big point in the Harry Potter books of standing up for marginalized and bullied people. (How well she succeeded at that is a matter of some debate, but the broad strokes were there in the original work). When she turned on trans people and revealed virulent hate in her heart, she broke the emotional contract implied by the values of her series.

I’m not saying writers have to be as heroic as their characters, but if your work conveys broad-strokes values, it’s probably a good idea to try and follow those values in your professional life. Everyone makes mistakes, and the internet can be unforgiving, but if you develop a fanbase, it’s also like, worth having a personal ethos and trying to be consistent with it.

The slippery bits and caveats

Obviously, there’s a giant “But…” in my conception of emotional contracts, and that is – some audience members are going to misinterpret the specifics for the broad strokes. That is, there are going to be people angry that their particular ship wasn’t rewarded. Now, again, this is slippery, because we’re touching on the concept of queerbaiting just by implicating ships. It’s not 2009 or 2011 anymore, and the representation of queer relationships has definitely increased in the last ten to fifteen years, but I would caution my fellow authors in particular about watching out for queerbaiting. In my experience, the people who see a few minutes of contact and get excited about a potential ship are pretty self-aware and reasonably self-deprecating. It’s mostly when a relationship spans the long term, has a lot of focus, and is heavily built up that authors get into trouble for not fulfilling reader expectations.

Now, you’re just not going to make everyone happy. That’s human nature. But it’s very important to go over a particular project and make sure that the biggest promises that were set up actually get fulfilled.

(And that, among other reasons, is why I wasn’t happy enough with my first draft of Monsters and Fools, the sequel to Underlighters, and why I’m rewriting the whole damn thing.)

If there’s a particular couple that you’ve spent a lot of ink and time on, get them together OR have a damned good reason for them to not end up together. If there’s an underlying philosophical point in your work, even if you’ve outgrown it, just fulfill it and write something more mature in the next book or series, instead of trying to retcon the story to fit your new ideals. (ASK ME HOW I KNOW.) Villains don’t always have to die, but the fundamental questions asked by a work do need to be answered.

So get out there, and answer some questions!

I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out.

Meanwhile, I’m going to make progress on wrapping up the enormous private online tabletop roleplay game I’ve been working on. After that, I feel mortally compelled to work on the gothic horror rewrite of my first novel ever, a standalone that’s going to feature themes of gender dysphoria, colonization, and a tech oligarch villain. I’ve been struggling with Synchronicity (different title coming; I’m thinking “The Violent Ones”) since a former friend figuratively ripped its original draft to shreds and convinced me it was unsalvageably bad, in need of wholesale rewrites.

I kind of wish I’d just published that messy baby as my first novel anyway, buuuuuuuut I also know that my ideas for this complete rewrite are going to be a banger, and I’m going to do my best to do justice to it, on behalf of my shy, petrified teenage self, who hoped so dearly to release her first novel ever to the wide world, and to be a child prodigy.

Anyway, happy writing to all of us!

If you liked this article, and boy I hope you did, please do give me a subscribe, or take a peek at my Patreon and Substack. I’m trying to keep my stuff accessible and not paywalled, and your support helps me with that goal.

***

A writer and artist, Michelle Browne lives in southern AB with xer family and their cats. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Find xer all over the internet: Website  Amazon  Substack Patreon Ko-fi  Instagram  Bluesky  Mastodon  Tumblr  Medium  OG Blog  Facebook

In Celebration of the Mary Sue

Source. Complete with jealous unicorn. 

When the ninth Star Wars movie came out, Rise of Skywalker, a particular term from writing communities online started to become ubiquitous. Horribly, it made its way around the internet's Manosphere, as particularly oafish chuds keen for low-hanging fruit reached for this easy prize. More happily, a backlash to the liberal and overused weaponised term became circulated, and we've now hit the saturation point of the wave where the term "Mary Sue" has fallen out of the limelight. 

When you hear the term "Mary Sue," which originated in Star Trek fan zines to call out a particular type of wish-fulfillment writing, you might have a variety of ideas. Some of them might be vague assocations - "isn't that a thing from that movie?" - or, if you're an Extremely Online person like myself, you might break out in compulsive shuddering and hives at the mere utterance of the phrase. 

But now that people have broken down the inherent sexism in the concept of the Mary Sue, to the extent that its creators have renounced its creation, we may have hit a point where we can just consider the Sue in isolation - and not only offer ways to accept and write around the wish-fulfillment character, but appreciate her for what she is: an often goofy fantasy that may help people process their powerlessness in real life and real trauma, offer escape from the weight of reality, or both. 

Who is Mary Sue? 

For an overview of this long-spanning trend and a glimpse of this essay's inspiration, this video is absolutely mandatory. For those who don't like Youtube, or just don't want to stop reading, the Sue is a personification of a criticism of a couple of writing problems. They're often conflated together, but they should actually be teased apart - despite how often they co-occur. A Sue is, 

Mar·y Sue

noun

noun: Mary Sue; plural noun: Mary Sues

1. (originally in fan fiction) a type of female character who is depicted as unrealistically lacking in flaws or weaknesses.

   "she was not a ‘strong woman’ so much as an insufferable Mary Sue"

Even the Oxford Dictionary's definition showcases the inherent special-case pleading and sexism applied to Sues. The original argument against Sues went thusly: 

1) Sues are badly written (inherently) because they 

2) Warp the plot, setting, and characters' actions around themselves; 

3) Have an unrealistic number of positive traits,

4) A corresponding deficit of actual negative traits (with the exception of tropey or common flaws that may or may not be actual flaws, such as "being too beloved") 

5) Get too much focus and attention in the story, 

6) Don't have to pay the price for their successes,

And 7), which often goes unspoken, "have wish fulfillment girl cooties all over them in some indefinably repulsive way." 

Now, I went through my own "anti-Sue" phase as a teenager and young adult; I used the Mary Sue Litmus to "make sure characters were balanced and well-written" as much as anyone. But now that I'm old, tired, and much more experienced as a writer, my perspective on this has changed drastically. 

And part of the reason for that is simply that I watched a show with an honest-to-god Mary Sue character, and it was great fun. 

The Chilling Adventures of Mary Sue 

Netflix's Riverdale and Sabrina have both had their moments, but despite being an avid fan of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch back in its Melissa Joan Hart era (when Disney Adventure Magazine advised copying her look by wearing an "earthy choker", a phrase that confuses me to this day) I had held off on watching either series. For one thing, the Archie comics series' lack of character development in its original form struck me as a type of perpetual purgatory worthy of The Good Place' s original demon pits. 

(As always, I'm late to the party, but Russian Doll and The Good Place are every bit as good as people have been saying they were. Give them a watch, or a rewatch, for some delectable afterlife paperwork tropes, fascinating philosophy, and heartfelt existentialism.) 

Being sick with COVID, as I mentioned in my last post, made this an ideal opportunity to catch up on some TV. I was in for quite a surprise with Sabrina. 

The magically-talented girlboss skips and bounces over third and fourth-wave feminist issues while literally and figuratively battling the patriarchy, showcasing phenomenal cosmic powers, being an absolute Chosen One to whom others are attracted or obsessed over, and is generally compassionate, friendly, serious, clever, and a great leader. She's also small, conventionally attractive, and the focus on attention for universe-bending powers. And here's the thing - she's great fun, and the show is great fun. 

Who's afraid of Mary Sue? 

Because the show takes itself just seriously enough and has just enough campy fun in the mix, it works like a Long Island Iced Tea - an easy-drinking alchemical mix of delight. Seeing the way the show worked perfectly fine, however, got me thinking about the ways in which Sabrina was a Sue - and it was perfectly fine. 

In turn, I reflected on my own D&D campaigns and writing, and considered how my players had made their own super cool wish fulfillment characters not only bearable, but actually fun to play with. Now, the rules for writing with others and writing solo are a bit different, but there is some overlap. 

Because the term is so stigmatized, it may be more comfortable for readers to hear about the negative instances first, before we ease into how Sues can be worked with and even weaponized for good in the plot. 

Bad Sues 

Of course, everyone online or who plays tabletop games has some kind of a story about that one bad player whose self-insert character absolutely destroyed the game, or a DM/GM (Dungeon or Game Master) whose NPC (Non-Player Character) was just the most obnoxious piece of crap ever to grace the wet-erase maps. These people are real, and they exist in many spaces - but the problem with them is generally not what they're creating, but how they interact with others. We tend to project that negativity from the experience onto their writing, but the real sin was just being selfish and a bad sport. 

In two different roleplay groups, I had players who wanted to portray similar roles - the stone-cold, stoic badass who takes epic kill shots and gets to be at the centre of the plot arc. One of these players was bad with consent and paying attention to fellow players, and ultimately ended up getting the boot from that group. The other player, however, remains a good friend to this day, and actually did get the kill shot on the Big Bad Evil Guy of that adventure because she a) was and is always well-mannered to other players, b) put the work in to make her badass character get better, and c) went with the fun twists that the DM threw at her, rather than resisting them or bickering. 

Fixing Mary Sue 

Let's get this one out of the way - the problem with Mary Sues is not actually their existence, but their contextual existence with others. Balance is a bit of a myth when protagonists are involved - and something that, as many other writers have noted, never becomes a concern or comes into play when male characters are protagonists - but when working with an ensemble cast, making sure that existing characters either a) get their moment or b) have a really good reason for not getting their moment, is vitally important. 

There's a wonderful Star Trek: TNG episode called "Disaster" in which Deanna Troi gets to be leader for a day, while Captain Picard is stuck in an elevator with a cadre of children. It's surprisingly heartwarming and adorable - partly because for once, Troi is taken seriously and permitted to be useful and competent. However, the way Picard is removed is absolutely excellent, and very much recommendable if one wanted ways to neutralize other main characters: a common ailment + their greatest weakness = an existing MC out of commission. 

In a roleplay game, making sure that every player character gets some kind of moment during the game, whether it be an acting or emotional beat, a cool fight move, a clever problem-solving section, or even just a great assist for another friend, is a great way to create a sense of symmetry. Symmetry is better than balance, because all too often, "balance" becomes a reason to throw a wet blanket on fun, exciting, over-the-top moments - when the real solution is not a wet blanket, but consequences. 

Does Mary Sue have every type of elemental bending power without being an Avatar? Cool; make her a fugitive, and send horrible politicians and scientists after her, trying to weaponize her strengths. Is she an orphan? Have a situation come up where her family connections backfire on her or the lack thereof creates some kind of disadvantage. This turns the sometimes overstuffed backpack of traits and tropes that Sues tend to lug around into a handy-dandy kit of tools for storytellers to use. As long as there are consequences for characters' actions or advantages, the audience will feel the illusion of balance, and a sense of symmetry will be created. 

Embrace the Sue

Ultimately, Mary Sue is the daughter of Joy and Enthusiasm, and the problem isn't her rainbow Converse or fairy wings or super duper magic powers - it's cases of bad manners. And while some might consider it unmannerly to be tacky, which the Sue often arguably is, I would counterpoint that part of writing and creative activities is inherently about fantasy. The smallness of someone's imagination should not be the boundary of other people's creations. 

Watching a bunch of one's friends get to play out the ideal versions of their best selves isn't a buzzkill - it's actually fantastic and delightful. Ultimately, that's what a Mary Sue can be and can offer: a chance to glimpse our ideal selves and our fantasies, and sometimes, to pursue that in our real lives. 

, 

Apex Published Me!

 I've currently got COVID - it doesn't look serious so far, but it's certainly annoying, and I'm homebound. However, I thought you all might enjoy having a look at this. 

My article on polyamory and OT3s

I'm hoping to get more articles out this year (I know, again) so stay tuned to this space for more writing advice, media thoughts, and the occasional bit of personal stuff. 

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her spouses and their cats. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

Changing Words is Hard

 Using the right words is not especially easy. I should know; I help people do that for a living. I also try to make words do things to say stuff and express my feelings. 

Content warning: I allude to slurs in this piece, citing a couple of them, and also discuss ableism.

Sometimes those feelings are angry, contemptuous, dismissive, or that sort of thing. It's useful to have ways to belittle or express aggression towards people - say, for political reasons, or to express helplessness, fear; there's a constellation of reasons to embrace both negative emotions and negative communication. 

When that happens, it's easy to reach for words like "idiot," "moron," "stupid," and other things. But the origins of these words and their deployment in modern speech is often against people with disabilities - or those perceived as inferior. In the same way as calling someone "blind" to express that they're actually being stubborn, making a bad decision, or deliberately ignoring something is actually inaccurate, it also demeans people with visual impairments. 

There's been a popular push to stop using slurs - first and most easily, of course, is the n word (with or without a hard r on the end; if you don't know which word "the n word" is, you're probably beyond my help). The word "retard" and "faggot" are also falling out of use, and have been for the better part of a decade, for good reason. The latter and the n word are used rarely and in acts of reclamation by particular communities - but that's a different matter, and not one that requires policing - least of all, by a white woman, even a queer one. 

The type of language I'm talking about encompasses more than the most infamous slurs, though - it includes more ordinary words, which can easily pass unnoticed for those unaffected by particular traumas.

Why bother?

This probably sounds like needless nitpicking - I'll be honest, I've had that exact thought in the past - but the way we use words and language shapes the way we think. More educated people than myself have talked about this at length.

Although I have sometimes grumbled about this very topic, it ultimately aligns with my principles to avoid ableism and try to reshape my language. One can have a bit of emotional attachment to words - the sharp slap and sting of particular insults and curse words is very pleasing and useful. But what are humans if not innovators? It's one of our primary advantages as a species.

Sometimes it's also useful to reach backwards and time and see if there's anything to offer - generations of teachers have made use of this particular list to engage students' attention, and frankly, it works pretty darn well. Some of these do definitely fall in the "derogatory language" pile, insulting perceived intelligence and whatnot, but a lot of them are pretty darn fun, satisfying, and useful. 

Who cares about this? 

A lot of people, actually. I'm far from the first person to talk about it, but I thought bringing my own perspective to things - and being honest about my own limitations in adopting better language - might benefit some people. I've peppered references and links throughout my essay, as usual, but a quick search of ableist language on Google will reveal millions of hits and articles. A lot of people care about this.

The fact of the matter is, existing with a marginalization or multiple marginalizations makes the world feel like a hurricane of gravel. One gets inured to the storm, but that doesn't mean one's tolerance for pain is endless or infinite. And if we can reduce that careless pain for others - and refine the precision of our own language, expressing more in the process - is there really a downside? Sure, there's some inconveniences, and it's not always comfortable to examine our own internalized prejudices, but the benefits ultimately outweigh the costs. Yes, it's more work. Yes, it's uncomfortable. But not watching friends' shoulders tense up after a casually-deployed slur is rewarding.

Is this censorship?

In a word, no, but let me explain why. First of all, the process of censorship refers to government or organizationally-sanctioned or rejected terminology. In addition to the fact that different groups will reject and accept particular terminology - for instance, conservative groups tend to avoid queer-affirming language when they discuss things like anti-trans legislation - the intent here is to provide tools for anger that do not cause additional harm. 

There is a strong difference between internally rejecting the use of something and being forced to do so by an external body or power. Choosing the words we use is very different from being told we can't use particular words. 

Interestingly, none of the sources or sites or people I've talked to about this issue were against swearing; neither did they express a refusal to tolerate emotional anger or angry expressions. 

To provide yet another comparison, it's a bit like using a focused attack rather than an area-of-effect attack in Dungeons and Dragons - to quote a common internet witticism, "an arrow may have your name on it, but a fireball is addressed 'to whom it may concern.'" Why use a fireball, and risk the chance of friendly fire damage, when we can precisely target our opponent or the source of our frustrations? 

I certainly can't think of a good reason to casually inflict harm on people I care about, and if I can insult someone just a little better, it's going to be more satisfying. 

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and their cats. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

The Secret of Evil

 I'd been sitting on this concept for a while, and then I found myself relaxing on Youtube one night, watching a film reviewer's analyses - and I was jolted from my comfortable mood and into a flurry of expository frothing. 

Possible content warning for talk about cults, general acts of violence, the dark side of humanity, cops, abuse - you get the idea.

Now, I think Ryan Hollinger does a great job of analysing this giving the constraints of his expertise and knowledge. I generally love his channel, and would recommend it. However, the underlying concept of this movie bothered me so greatly that, well - here we are. 

What is evil?

For our purposes, "evil" refers to socially unacceptable, transgressive acts that cause harm to others. Examples include violent acts, sexual assault, murder, theft, fraud, lying - you get it. 

Now, as long as humanity has been living in groups, squatting near our little fires, we've quarreled and bickered and occasionally wronged or harmed each other - sometimes, more severely than at others. The call to understand both our own dark impulses and bad decisions and to understand those taken by others appears to be pretty universal. Narratives and folkloric tales about evil, good, punishment, and morality appear in every single human civilization and culture, from small subsistence clans and tribes to our modern era. 

I have a strong interest in cults, extremist groups, new religious movements, and that kind of thing. I've always wondered how "evil" came to be. It was a while before I understood that evil is a verb, not an actual force in the world. 

But writers - especially in Hollywood, but in the general creative sphere as well - don't all have degrees in the human condition. And while that's fine, what is not fine is the way that evil is portrayed and continues to be portrayed. Not to mention the fact that criminality is often portrayed as "evil," regardless of whether or not the criminal actions harmed anyone (i.e. an expired license plate vs a speeding ticket vs an assault charge). 

Now, fun, lighter-hearted portrayals of evil aren't really the issue here - I'm talking more about the serious portrayals, where a movie or story is really trying to Say Something. The silly portrayals of things, however, are rooted in the more serious stuff - so let's talk about what we see as evil.

There's no such thing as "born evil" 

Take a minute with it. If you already know that, and are going, "yeah, duh," then let me explain the whole "evil" thing in the context of murderers. I'm so tired of these bad, stupid true crime narratives about someone who just "wakes up and does bad things". They allow us to ignore the massive preponderance of people who a) commit crimes for survival purposes, b) the misunderstandings of how mental health issues and neurodivergence works (i.e. "evil autistic" etcetera), and c) socio-economic factors, not to mention d) the cycle of abuse. That's not even including e) cultural dehumanization of others caused by privilege - such as with wealth, perceived moral authority, or racist or gender-based ideas, to name but a few. 

Let me run through those again with examples. Now, I'm not saying these are actually all "causes of evil," but they're various examples of causes of harmful acts, that some people might label - fairly or unfairly - as evil. Some of these groups and people are especially vulnerable to maltreatment, and especially innocent of what they're accused of, but culturally, we don't usually act like that's the case.

a) survival criminality - doing something bad for either good reasons or personal safety. Example: stealing a TV to pay for a child's school fees; stealing to pay for drugs in the case of an addiction 

b) mental health issues and neurodivergence - people who experience impaired empathy and/or struggle to conform to societal cultural norms. Example: an autistic child slapping a caregiver during a meltdown, because they feel angry and/or threatened.

c) socio-economic factors - poverty is often criminalised, and some people - in Canada, that includes Indigenous, Metis, and First Nations people, and Black, African, and Caribbean Canadians in particular - are disproportionately accused of and suspected of crimes. This can lead to being forced into the prison system, loss of opportunities, prejudice, and murder. If you've heard the phrase "school to prison pipeline" regarding the way Black people are treated, you'll know what I'm talking about. (If you don't, look it up; it's very important. Also horrifying.) Example: a store manager points at a Black child for acting "suspicious," assuming the child has stolen a candy bar. (Depending on the portrayal, either the child will be implied to be "evil" or the store owner will be "evil".) 

d) the cycle of abuse. Abuse survivors who don't deal with their experiences in some way go on to abuse others. Example: a man who is assaulted by his uncle may later go on to assault his daughter's friend in her teen years. Alternately, an abused child may go on to abuse her spouse in adulthood.

e) cultural dehumanization of others caused by privilege - such as with wealth, perceived moral authority, or racist or gender-based ideas, to name but a few. The trope of the Evil Rich Executive from the 80s is a good example. See also, President of the US #45 for abundant and horrifying examples of dehumanizing and abusing others. 

Does evil even exist? 

I mean, colloquially, sure. As a primeval force? No. Even companies that profit from true crime content will, with some bashfulness, admit that a significant majority of the "terrifying killers" they love to portray are just severely abused people who've ended up lashing out in the worst possible ways. In the exceptionally rare cases where multiple murderers aren't actually abused in childhood and/or suffering severe adverse effects, there's often neurological damage involved. 

However, as you can see from this brief analysis, it's pretty clear that evil is more of a verb than a state of being. Someone's actions can be evil, but defining a person as "evil" assigns a certain kind of evaluation that is both dehumanizing and oddly absolving. I won't dive into the depths of Christian theology about evil right now - but even in games like Dungeons and Dragons,  confronting the question of "evil races" (yikes) has required some updates and changes. And frankly, that's a good thing. 

How do we write about bad things and evil, then? 

Don't take this essay as the vituperative howling of an inveterate killjoy. Rather, it's a plea for authors to realise that the old stories we've been telling are not only dusty and boring from overuse, they're deeply inaccurate. The real world's cues are so much more interesting and fertile, and trying to tell the same old mortality tales that have already been explored - without adding to them - is both artistically annoying and actually pretty harmful. 

All of these things can still make for incredible, nuanced, interesting, gripping stories...but NoOoooooo, Hollywood still loves, "but what if just pure evil?" At this point, the thought experiment side of it is no longer a good argument. It's become the predominant understanding of how crime, especially murderers, work - and that's really, really bad.

We learn about the world from the narratives we take in - whether that's pursuing true crime tales late into the night or listening to harrowing tales of social justice and fights against societal forces, or even just watching a fun, dumb horror movie. Luckily, there's a lot of wonderful work that's been coming out that does take these nuanced, complicated stories into account - to list some podcasts I love, How We Roll, Dungeons and Randomness, Campaign: Skyjacks, The Adventure Zone, and Critical Role all tend to feature plenty of nuance in the "evil" characters, as well as in the "good" ones.

So ask yourself - who are the heroes in this tale, and in the world? Who do you instinctively take the side of when you see a real-world conflict? Although we all pride ourselves on being able to tell the differences between facts and fiction, our construction of the world comes from stories - and that means we have to be honest about who we label "the bad guys," and why.

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and their cats. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

Being Goth is Self-Care

 So, I've had a thing for distressed sweaters and knitwear since childhood - between The Matrix (1999) and my love of Dickens and his orphans, I've always had an appreciation and fascination for things falling apart. Growing up in an upper-middle-class household with parents from lower working-class backgrounds (a farming family and a military family respectively), having to really wear things out before I got a new one wasn't much of a problem. (Yes, I realise how frustratingly privileged that statement will sound, to many people. I know.) 

But I grew up with my fashion sense somewhat circumscribed. For one thing, being a fat child in the 90s and 2000s was not especially easy. That is putting it mildly; for a variety of reasons, it was hell, and has left me with lasting body image issues and struggles with disordered eating ever since. Add on a hormonal condition, PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) and you have a recipe for body dysmorphia that no physician will ever pick up, and self-loathing that's been hard to shake. 

Over the years, I've managed to chip away at it bit by bit. There are still body parts I hate, resent, and fear - but I don't always hate them all the time, and what's more, I actually like other parts of my body. Learning how to look all right while not smiling in photos has also been useful. I like taking pictures of the world around me, my friends, and myself to capture a mood, a moment, or a memory - and frankly, I don't like faking happiness or calm. I was rather good at it for a long time, but it certainly wasn't good for me. 

 

How do you solve a problem like self-loathing? 

Well, in my case, with fashion. I always designed and drew dresses in my childhood, and learning to knit and sew by hand, and later, re-learn to sew with a machine, has enabled me to alter my clothes so they either fit or are more comfortable. I'm not great at it all the time, but just doing it is very validating. 

It's rather embarrassing to be a woman in her thirties going through a goth phase; most of the time, it's relegated to the province of teens or young adults. But frankly, life does not end at age 30, as I am discovering, and neither does self-examination. Certainly, I hope it is less navel-gazing and circular than the decidedly shallow, valid stuff that fills many a "man pain" Literary novel - but the truth is that middle-aged people exist, and are not always complacent. 

As relationships mature and the haze of crisis dies down, it's not a bad idea to reevaluate things and consider what causes one pain and what brings relief and comfort - and to seek more of the latter, while resolving the former. But in the same vein, avoiding pain and wallowing in it are both traps. The only middle ground of peace is acceptance. And sometimes, being a little sad for a while feels nice. 

Where does the goth stuff come in to this? 

The thing about wearing clothing that is flamboyant and artistic and expressive is that in addition to pairing things that look nice together in a satisfying way, it also lets me communicate nonvisually. I've loved distressed sweaters for ages - but frankly, the last four years have been particularly distressing, and there's really something refreshing about feeling like shit because you look like shit, but make it fashion.

And sometimes, non-verbal, even non-spoken communication can be really powerful. With the toll 2020 has taken on me, being able to throw on a dark, gloomy sweater, and feeling its weight, being able to pet the soft knitted fabric and pluck the loose threads or smooth them back into shape, has been viscerally cathartic in a way. Sometimes, one has articulated all they can about one's feelings, but a mood still remains - and for that, wearing black or a big, glum, clouded-sky grey scarf can be awfully comforting. It's a way to signal one's mind state without having to say it out loud. 

And this is not to say that my depression has come back - oddly, I think my mental health is better this month than it's been in years. There are two very big problems I've been struggling with for more than a decade (which I'll talk about more later; they're difficult) - and I've finally cracked them. But of course, sometimes I'm still sad, especially as I work on things and grieve the loss of them.

frankly, the last four years have been particularly distressing, and there's really something refreshing about feeling like shit because you look like shit, but make it fashion.

Now, that's not to say that I'm always wearing black distressed sweaters, stockings or socks, and black shorts/distressed denim skirts every single day. In fact, it's been kind of a good motivation to wear more colourful clothes at other times. The difference between sadness and depression is, in a sense, consent. To be less glib, however, depression washes the colour out of everything; sadness has plenty of value. 

Clothes can be feelings

The thing about wearing dark clothing is that it's been allowing me to basically validate my own feelings and express them without having to, I don't know, walk around making declarative sentences at all times. I am not, after all, an NPC in a video game. 

But clothing can be used to express joy, or madness, or a desire for comfort as well. If there's one thing I've learned from this, it's that improbable things that feel inaccessible sometimes work better than we might expect. So, for my readers - maybe you're a mother in a van feeling overwhelmed. Sometimes this sort of thing takes hours, but it's not as though the only way to be goth or express another alternative fashion sense is to spend hours upon hours doing one's makeup. (That is also fine, of course, but not everyone has, wants, or needs to do that much makeup or preening.) Wearing all black and putting on some extra eyeliner might be enough for you - and it doesn't make you inferior. 

Alternatively, purple pants and an insane 80s sweater might evoke the hectic madness someone is feeling. Does something appear to clash? Well, try it anyway. People, myself included, often worry about "pulling off" an outfit, but the key to doing that isn't just confidence - it's comfort. If something is comfortable, or makes one's body feel good (say, a tight belt on a loose shirt dress, or a corset, or pants with just the right texture) then it's going to look so much better than that stiff, awful chiffon on that disappointingly cute cottagecore blouse. 

And finally: phases pass. Some of them become a normal part of one's life, losing their intensity; some just end unexpectedly one day. But giving oneself permission to just try something for a while is terribly important. And at the very least? It's going pretty well for me. 

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and their two cats. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi