https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⚡" title="High voltage sign" aria-label="Emoji: High voltage sign"> I want to talk about my relationship to fiction and my writerly ambitions but I& #39;m afraid that if I spell things out other plural folks will think I& #39;m a monster

and maybe I am? but hear me out https://twitter.com/squidlarkin/status/1218994586892111872">https://twitter.com/squidlark...

https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⚡" title="High voltage sign" aria-label="Emoji: High voltage sign"> I think of fiction as being real, but a different kind of reality than the tangible world

all stories are true, somewhere in the multiverse

this also applies to headspace; it& #39;s literally the world of imagination, but the things that happen there do matter, in some sense

https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⚡" title="High voltage sign" aria-label="Emoji: High voltage sign"> and stories, well. they need conflict, don& #39;t they? bad things need to happen to drive the story forward

and the kinds of stories I& #39;m especially drawn to tend to have particularly dark and fucked-up things happening

comes with the territory of being traumatized, probably

https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⚡" title="High voltage sign" aria-label="Emoji: High voltage sign"> but the way our brain works, I don& #39;t think I& #39;m capable of conceiving of a character without breathing life into them

so if I write them into some awful scenarios, aren& #39;t I effectively subjecting actual, sentient beings to those horrors?

https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⚡" title="High voltage sign" aria-label="Emoji: High voltage sign"> so there& #39;s an urge to say, I can& #39;t write, it would be unethical. or if I do, I should stick to feel-good stories with happy endings

but that wouldn& #39;t actually prevent bad shit from happening in our imagination, in our headspace

https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⚡" title="High voltage sign" aria-label="Emoji: High voltage sign"> there are nightmare worlds, deep in our psyche. we can& #39;t stop the suffering there, we& #39;ve tried. all we can do is compartmentalize, dissociate, and try to ignore it

if it& #39;s inevitable, why not harness it? describe it, process it, give it meaning, use it to connect with others?

https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⚡" title="High voltage sign" aria-label="Emoji: High voltage sign"> the line between fiction and reality is blurry, but it exists. and here& #39;s the main difference:

a character can suffer horribly, can even die, and when it& #39;s over I can pull them out of that world and tell them, "it& #39;s ok. it was only a story. you& #39;re safe now."

https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⚡" title="High voltage sign" aria-label="Emoji: High voltage sign"> yeah, this is what I& #39;ve settled on. if I imagine a scene, it& #39;s already happened, and so have all the possible variations. I& #39;m not creating reality, I& #39;m just curating it

like picking out a book in the Library of Babel, or an Amberite walking in shadows https://twitter.com/sylverfyreValk/status/1247263013171798019?s=19">https://twitter.com/sylverfyr...