Recently, I joined a new reading-tracking site/app, because I’d tried to get by without one for a while and quickly lost track of what books I’d already bought. (This also happens when you diversify your buying habits and stop buying everything from the same site. And maybe when you’re old.) This, so far, is fine. Then I did what I absolutely should not have done and looked up reviews for my books. Reviews are for readers, I know that; I just wondered.
And I found a meticulously crafted, many thousands of words-long, point by point takedown of every single aspect and almost every single scene in Healers’ Road. It was truly a thing of beauty, and must have taken hours to put together. (All this for a book that came out 10+ years ago and sells a couple dozen copies a year…)
Now, this is the reader’s right. You can DNF books that you loathe to the pits of your soul, or you can spend many more hours writing detailed dissertations on why this book and its author suck more than anyone on earth has ever sucked. Everyone has the freedom to make that choice.
One point, though, did bother me. Not that the reader said it; that was their view, and they’re entitled to it. Because it shows that my intent didn’t get through as I’d wanted. In fact, readers are taking away the complete polar opposite of what I intended, and this suggests that I’m not doing my job properly. This is a problem I ought to work on — not to change people’s opinions on what exists, but to do better in the future. I believe in Death of the Author, but I also think authors can learn and improve from backlash.
So here’s the problem. I include friendships between characters in all of my work. I often also include romantic relationships, usually not at the center of the story, but off to the side somewhere. Character A and Character B are friends at the center of the story; Character B is also romantically and/or sexually involved with Character C off to the side of the story. Lavender is dating Yahz, but that’s not the core of the story; Lavender establishing herself in Crystalbrook and learning more about the world and her powers are the core of the story. Kei is seeing Edann in a barely-tolerate-one-another-with-benefits arrangement, but they aren’t the core of the story; Kei and Agna are. And so on. (The exception is Therapist 7, which does center a romantic relationship even though it doesn’t follow romance genre story beats [the third-act breakup, etc.] Nothing against the romance genre.)
The message readers take from this is that I’m acephobic and arophobic, because I still include romantic and sexual relationships in the story. The implication is that friendship only thrives when it is the only bond type in the story; when something else exists in the vicinity, it MUST take precedence. Therefore, because I include platonic and non-platonic types of relationships, I must hate ace and aro people and hate friendship. Only in a sexual and romantic vacuum can friendship exist, apparently.
This is the opposite of what I intended. And failing so badly at carrying out my intention is a problem.
Again, readers are not wrong for taking these interpretations away from the story. I put the words there.
I will have to rethink how to carry out my actual intention, which is to include romantic and/or sexual relationships while centering friendships. In my fiction, I include romantic and/or sexual relationships because most people around me pursue and/or maintain them, and I want to believe that friendship does not have to exist only in a vacuum. I want to believe that it can thrive even while people have other kinds of bonds in their lives as well. I want to believe that friendship is a strong bond that can withstand the existence of other bonds in people’s lives. I want to believe that people can have partners of whatever kind if they want them, and still care about their friends. Yes, that’s a bit utopian. I write fantasy.
I don’t begrudge people wanting stories without any sex or romance in them at all. Heck, I recently bought a whole bundle on itch.io about aromanticism. But I am going to insist till I finally pack up my keyboard that every friendship does not have to exist in a world where the entire world is platonic. I build my worlds without the same societal assumptions we live under, and in my worlds, people fucking care about their friends. Whether or not they also have partners. (Hell, Francesca has somewhere between one and six partners, and she still has time to go on an adventure with Lavender and Solan in Therapist 4.)
The book I’m almost done with is about a bond between former schoolmates turned coworkers. A sibling bond is very important in the story, as are two pairs of mentor and mentee. Alongside all of this, one of the leads starts dating someone. We’ll see if the existence of that side plot wipes out everything else in the story. I hope not. But the readers can decide for themselves. I hope I haven’t messed it up this time, and if I have, well, I hope to do better in the story after that, or the story after that.
Finally, a little bit of irony: If someone said I must be acephobic because the antagonist in Therapist 8 is ace, I would have to concede that I must have messed something up. My intention with Burleigh was for his antagonism to stem from his inability to accept his aceness, not his aceness itself — internalized acephobia (and possibly homophobia) is the enemy. If I screwed that up, I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ve since read that it’s evil to have another character tell the ace character what asexuality is. (Not sure how he’d know otherwise, since he came from Earth where ace invisibility is rampant. Oh well. The book is written, it’ll just have to stay evil.) — But no one has complained about Burleigh, only the existence of sexual and romantic relationships. So…I guess that’s okay.