Unhinged shipper

Through the process of outlining the story and beginning to write it, I quickly realized that I had a lot to say, and that I was particularly compelled to comment on the systems designed to oppress the others, and the tools (in particular religion) used to suppress rebellion and keep people in line. She's a queer black woman with religious trauma y'all, and this is how we process. Buckle in.

Jokes aside, when one understands that they are engaged in a centuries old power struggle between the masses and those who would exploit them, acceptance of difference both in ones self and in others, becomes a radical act.

Love for ourselves and one another becomes a violent rejection of The Man, and the system responds with lethal retaliation. We're all born in that war zone and the system works hard to keep us blind to it. Those who become "woke" are singled out and targeted. They become the bogyman we're told to fear and to hate, even though they are in fact just victims like us of the same system.

Telling the story of a monster who is in fact not the monster felt important to me then, and it has only continued to feel more imperative as we slog through an increasingly dangerous political climate, particularly here in the US.

After crying over Shane x Ilya's, and Scott x Kips stories last night, I've realized why that fic I started writing two years ago was always destined to eat my brain and take on a life of its own.

It's because life is hard and I'm just so damn tired. Life is hard, and harder still when you're someone who observes and feels compelled to write words and believes that stories have power and meaning.

Life is hard when the world you live in is broken, and you can't close your eyes to it. But it's hard even when you do.

Because we all want connection. We want shelter, access to care, education and food. We want what everyone should have, but we are at the mercy of a system built to control who gets to have those things and at what cost.

And right now they're telling you that you don't deserve affordable access. You don't deserve free and inalienable, because you are less than they. And that if you fight, or if you cry out when your neighbors and your loved ones are butchered in their machine, you are amoral and the enemy of social order.

And in the world they've built for us, maybe that's true. Writers who write unapologeticly queer romances that question the merit of "normalcy" and encourage the destruction of the status quo, are a nightmare.