Final Answer Chapter Ten has been posted! I have a few thoughts about it which I will, God willing, come into focus over the course of the next few blogs or so. As always, spoilers follow.

So, I think I’ve portrayed enough tumultuous father-son relationships in my stories to warrant the disclaimer that my own dad and I get along and have always gotten along. I remember reading the works of certain erotica writers growing up, and in a very “I’m in high school and feel deductive and smart” way, I determined things about the authors by recognizing patterns in their stories. There was an old erotica writer whose name was something along the lines of Kenneth Hammond for instance, and nearly every story I happened to read from the guy featured the young adult male protagonist’s father being abusive, useless, or both. I concluded that the guy must have had some hang-ups about his own father. Maybe it’s true, and maybe it isn’t; as I approach 30 I now wonder how productive that line of questioning is.

One thing I love about this community is that it doesn’t feel as parasocial as it could. You don’t know me in real life and I don’t know you, and there could be this very singular way of communicating, but there are several avenues where anyone that does want to get in contact with me can – Discord, emails, comments, etc. As such, people have given thoughts and even criticism on my writing in very public ways – which I genuinely love – and have gone even farther, making observations about my work and what patterns they think this work follows. Honestly, one of the most heartwarming and affirming pieces of feedback I ever got was a thoughtful reader one musing that if my works had to all follow a theme, it was consent and how the nuances of consent affect us. That feedback has made it into my subconscious goals of writing. I love that goal, and I enjoy the idea of keeping it in mind.

In this way, I realize that as I keep writing, in a way I’m putting my own subconscious and unconscious self on display, or, just as potently, appearing to. Someone could read my stories, particularly Final Answer and The Good The Bad and the Molly (even Being More Social has two father figures in it with some kind of difficulty showing emotion, and a third one is divorced), and conclude I had a mean or abusive father figure. Is the fact that’s true or not even relevant to such, or am I accidentally making the meta of all of the themes of my stories, blurred together, its own narrative?

I’m in the process of writing a standalone piece called After. It’s an absolute behemoth – my guess is it’s going to easily cross 20,000 words – and I first thought of its concept and plot in 2017. It has some themes to it that, let’s just say, look like they were inspired by more contemporary events, and takes a particular political side on these events. Even though the story of After is clear in my mind, I worry that even one reader is going to read it and, not unreasonably, conclude that I took a particular stance (which I didn’t) on somewhat recent events. That’s not enough motivation for me to stop or significantly change the story, especially since After is going to provide a lot of context for a story of mine I can almost guarantee you have forgotten about (though to be fair, it’s arguably as a standalone piece my most forgettable story). The flipside of the coin is that I’m aware this will change that big meta narrative I mentioned, and I’m worried it’ll change it in a big way.

In the same way, in the hypothetical biography of me that will never exist but we all fantasize about being written after we die, I’m worried it’ll have some things to say about my dad, who is a loving, supportive guy. All that said, it’s possible I’m worried over nothing. There’s a weird blessing in once being more popular on the internet than you currently are, and to those who want to “make it big,” that might seem odd. For a relatively private person like me, there’s a serenity to knowing that if you were more popular, there would be more eyes on you, and you’d inevitably have more social problems on your hands. And you’ve read my writing – I can be as clumsy at handling those as my own characters! I’ll talk to you all soon.

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