Y0Addenda.6

In Which ‘Year Zero’ Gets an Acknowledgements Section

To the left side of the Board Room table sat Olivia and Kade. To the right sat Seven and Annabelle. At the head of the table sat Bel. Silence blanketed the room as a whole. From somewhere rooms away, the sound of keys on a mechanical keyboard rapidly clacking permeated the quiet. Out the window, a crescent expanse of the eastern suburbs of Edenglassie City fanned out into the distance, fading into bush and sparse housing towards the horizon.

“Okay, if no one else is gonna say it then I’m gonna have to say it,” Olivia sighed, leaning forward to look down her nose at Bel. “This is like…super fucking self indulgent.”

“Oh, I’m so very aware of that.” Bel assured her. “But it seemed weirdly appropriate? I don’t know. I drew a lot of inspiration for this book from my life - as one does - and you guys are…well…parts of me.”

“I have a question.” Anna raised her hand.

“You don’t have to raise your hand.” Bel rolled her eyes.

“Okay sure. So…the whole thing with Kade writing about me as a teenager? that’s what you used to do. As I recall, it let you work out a bunch of stuff about your feelings on gender, sexuality, attraction, love - not to mention that writing about me was basically how you cracked your own egg - and then you inserted me into this narrative as some dead bitch who’d been dating one of her own Alters. I’m not sure how to interpret that other than as you saying ‘go fuck yourself and die’, but hey.”

“Was there a question in there, Anna?” Bel raised an eyebrow.

“‘Fuck you, Bel?’ Note the upward inflection? Sounds like a question to me?”

“How do you think I feel?” Seven snarked.

“Bitch, we all know how you feel. How you feel drove like…ninety percent of the narrative structure. I think we can take a breather on dissecting Seven’s feelings, no?” Olivia groaned.

“This is off to an awesome start you guys,” Seven leaned back in her seat, exchanging a look with Kade.

“Calm down, Alter-killer,” Olivia sneered dismissively.

“Right back at you, Alter-fucker.” Seven raised both eyebrows, her head lilting to the side.

“Maybe this is me speaking from personal experience with both of you, but I feel like the former was an objectively worse experience than the latter.” Anna noted.

“Well, I’ll take the validation where I can get it so…thanks babe.” Olivia shot her a playful half-smile.

“Jesus fucking christ.” Bel sighed, her eyes folding closed and her left hand instinctively moving to pinch the bridge of her nose: “We have like…a bit to get through, here. Why did I think this was a good idea?”

“Yeah, why did you?” Kade asked, genuine confusion apparent in her expression.

“Literally no clue. But we’re all here, so…” Bel paused, shuffling through several sheets of A4. “So I guess I’m thanking people, to start with? That’s how these things usually go, right? First and foremost, I want to thank Dawn, obviously. Mine, specifically. I don’t think I could have done it without her support. I…sort of don’t know if I’d have wanted to. In a very real sense, this was a collaborative process. She was there every step of the way, reading random bits and pieces, giving me feedback and support, looking over my drafts and talking through my random tangents about where I wanted to go with things. Beyond that - even when we haven’t been able to talk as much as we’d like - she’s been there for me through every step of my actual transition and…y’know, the last 24-years-and-counting of friendship. Just, with no exaggeration or hyperbole…my absolute favourite person in the world. Honestly, ‘best friend’ seems like such an inadequate label. Oh, and I also want to thank my parents, and my sister. And, of course, my dad’s wife, and my sister’s husband.”

“Not doing names?” Olivia asked.

“I mean…I’m a pretty private person? I wanted to publish this in case someone found something in it that had value for them, but I don’t really want…attention, or to put my broader life out into the world? I like feeling seen, but I hate being perceived if that makes any sense?”

“I mean…yes. We’re you. So obviously it makes sense.” Anna said slowly. The rest of the Alters nodded.

“Yeah. Great. So I’d also like to thank the uh…the people I’ve met recently who’ve shown me that community and connection is, actually, real and - honestly - that it really is all it’s cracked up to be. It’s hard, y’know? Transitioning…losing so much, and you can sort of get it into your head that Community is a thing that’s just going to be inherently waiting for you. Like you might lose friends, family, your job…but at least you’ll have people like you to form connections with. Turns out…people are people. It might take awhile to find yours. Now that I have, it makes the struggle, the missteps, the bad experiences, feel a lot more…manageable.”

“Or maybe they’re just a bit slow and haven’t realised you’re awful yet?” Seven suggested.

“Y’know what, Seven?”

“Fucking what, Bel?”

“I’m glad I killed you off. It’s exactly this kind of negative self-talk bullshit that makes you - "

“ - a viable antagonist?”

“Someone who deserves to lose. I can catastrophise well enough on my own, thank you.”

“Just ignore her. We all do.” Kade sighed.

“No, it deserves actual pushback.” Bel replied before turning her full attention to Seven: “Look bitch: if you wanna be some doomer trans girl who blames the very concept of community for the fact that some individuals in any given cohort just suck, or that some of them approach connection with self-interest and a lack of intentionality, or if you wanna treat the fact you’re just not for everyone as if it’s the world’s fault, be my guest. Just know that it’s why everyone hates you, and why you’re the only version of me who’s gonna end up lonely and bitter and unloved. Me? I love my friends. I love my girlfriend. They all love me. I finally get that I deserve this and that I deserve to feel secure in it. So…shut the fuck up, basically, or I’ll bring you back and kill you again and it’ll be worse this time. Got it?”

“Got it.” Seven muttered to herself.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what the fuck I thought.” Bel snapped. “You’re their antagonist. To me? You’re just a voice in my head that makes me want a drink.”

“Girl, same.” Olivia deadpanned. “Oh, while we’re thanking people, you wanna give a shout out to Sartre?” She smirked. “Or Yeats?”

“Come on, those references were sparse. Let’s not over-egg the omelette, shall we?” Bel frowned. “Okay, I am…with extreme fucking hesitation and a deep-seated sense of preemptive regret…opening the floor to you guys’ collective bullshit. If there’s anything you want the like…five people who read this book to see me get embarrassed about, here’s your chance.”

“So we’re doing a Reddit AMA, basically?” Seven raised an eyebrow.

“Why not? This is already a super fucking weird way to structure an Acknowledgements section so…whatever.” Bel nodded.

“Okay, cool.” Anna grinned wolfishly. “Just for starters, all the Alters are old and white - "

“ - Oh fuck you.” Bel interjected. “Thirty-eight isn’t actually that old.”

“Gonna let me finish?” Anna raised an eyebrow. Bel sighed and nodded: “So we’re all old and white. Like…y’know…you. So obviously that’s why, but do you think that resulted in any…problems?” Bel leaned back in her chair, carefully folding one leg over the other and resting her hands in her lap.

“I’ve actually thought about this more than a little. While being trans immediately places you in a marginalised context, there is a stratification of privilege within that context, as well as privilege relative to other contexts. I do think there’s value in telling the story I told, and some key themes in that story are around loneliness and isolation. The whole…context of later-in-life transition, of lacking community, of retreating into and needing to navigate your internal self, of finding that, where you do have support, there’s often a significant gulf in others’ ability to actually understand the struggle. But I do feel as though there’s definitely a lot of relative privilege embedded in the narrative. I wrote the Alters to reflect quite a lot of me, and…I’m a white, middle class, able-bodied, Australian binary trans woman with a pretty solid history of full-time employment at or above median income, a decent amount of familial support, a small group of friends I can rely on, and a best friend I will love and trust with every atom of my being until the stars go out and entropy takes us all. All that is to say…as hard and as painful as the journey has been at times - and I refuse to downplay that on the basis of relative privilege; some days are worse than I could have ever imagined through the fog of dissociation - I’m lucky. But it also means that there are stories I don’t feel qualified to tell and experiences I may be aware of but don’t feel comfortable giving to my characters. I’m a big fan of collaborative storytelling, and of diverse voices speaking to diverse lived experience, and something I would love - love - to have the opportunity to do is work with authors with experiences and backgrounds different to my own to explore the intersections between those stratifications of privilege. Not just with transness, but kind of particularly with transness? But I’m also a socially terrified, pathologically awkward nobody, so that’s not something I’d have any idea how to like…do. I mean…for fucks sake, I can’t even start or hold conversations with people until I know them well enough to become insufferably hyper-verbal. But it’d be really cool, y’know?”

“Oh, I’ve got one.” Kade spoke up: “Clearly I was written with your experiences of your first year of transition very much in mind. But Olivia’s the other protagonist and she transitioned at twenty-two. I’m curious what the thinking was, there?”

“Oh sure. Well I’m in a bit of a weird position. Like Anna said…I’m old, y’know? Not old-old, I guess, but on the bellcurve of transition I’m well on my way down the right-hand slope for when it typically happens. Conversely, I’ve known I was trans since I was about twenty. So I was looking for a way of conveying this sort of dual mindset of having been very engaged with the idea of transness for a very long time, while still actually going through those initial stages of transition in the present. I also started writing this at around the one-year mark for HRT, so having Olivia being able to interact with you on the basis of having a bit of foreknowledge of what you were going through was something I thought was worth exploring. This is what I arrived at.”

“So you split yourself in half.” Olivia summarised.

“Not really ‘half’.” Bel glanced at Seven. Seven slowly turned to look at her directly, widening her eyes cartoonishly and letting her head loll to the side. “You’re so fucking weird Seven, I swear to god…”

“Speaking of dual mindsets…” Anna followed up: “You were talking about finding Community recently, but in the book there’s a fair amount of negativity around that?”

“Oh, with Faith’s perspective?”

“Well yes, but also Kade’s and Olivia’s.”

“It’s true. And those experiences are…well…yeah, they’re drawn from life. And they’re not universal but they also aren’t…uncommon. Even in the context of the text though, I think it’s pretty clear that it’s a matter of individual experience. I guess what I’d say about it is, like I was saying to Seven…first, Community isn’t a monolith, it’s just people. Not all people in any group are going to be your people, nor are all people in any group going to be good people. But…second, there’s this interaction between different negativities that I think it’s worth being explicit about. Olivia’s ’Hell is Other Trans Girls’, Faith’s ‘When they get the wall, I’ll be in the wind’…Kade’s whiny navel-gazing - "

“ - Hey!” Kade frowned.

“What, you disagree?” Bel raised an eyebrow in Kade’s direction.

“Continue…” Kade replied, folding her arms across her chest and sinking into her chair.

“Sure. So…these are not uncommon perspectives for trans women to have. Even from where I’m sitting, I hear them semi-regularly. They also aren’t perspectives that occur in a vacuum. They play off each other, pre-suppose each other, amplify each other. It’s not hard to see how Faith’s perspective could very much be the result of meeting a few too many Kades and Olivias. It’s not any real stretch to speculate that most of Olivia’s bullshit is a result of meeting girls exactly like herself, further along the timeline. And Kade…well, show me a trans girl that claims they didn’t devote a fair amount of time to using superficial comparisons to tear herself down and I’ll show you a fucking liar. Y’know?”

“Fucking…bleak.” Kade muttered.

“Being trans is not easy. It’s not one-size-fits-all, and the hardest lesson I learned really did end up being that in the end it came down to me. At a time when I neither liked nor trusted myself at all. And that’s the thing of it, in my estimation: you work out how to define your own journey, make your own meaning, or…it’s fucking nihilism all the way down. Worth it, though. Took some time, but now I have the community I’d convinced myself was a smokescreen, I don’t give a fuck about passing, I love myself…my life, even my body. It’s never too late.”

“And yet…you’re still saying ‘Hell is Other Trans Girls?’” Olivia smirked.

“Re-read your own chapters, Liv. It’s not about them being bad, it’s about comparison. Projection. Self-definition. It’s a reminder. Not just to avoid being an idiot, but to keep in mind that what they are to you, you could be to someone else. So like…act accordingly.”

“Okay. I have a different question.” Olivia leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers and looking upwards as if trying to work out the right combination and order of words to use: “So Ari and Tash and Kira are non-binary. Did you ever consider making any of them perspective characters?”

“I mean, not really. If I do another I might well look into it. But like I said, I’m binary and the focus of this book was largely on early transition from that perspective? I also don’t want to just…put words into enbies mouths about what their identities mean to them, y’know? It’s one thing to have non-binary characters in a novel, it’s entirely another to start…speculating about the interiority of characters who would have to have completely different lived experiences to myself.”

“So, reading between the lines, you’re too neurotic to risk getting it wrong?” Olivia needled. Bel sighed.

“‘Getting it wrong’ has stakes, Liv. How the fuck do you figure I have the right to represent interiority for a character I can’t relate to? And we all know that I constitutionally cannot write a perspective character without digging into their psyche and making a whole fucking thing of it, so…”

“Isn’t that what writers like…do?” Kade raised an eyebrow.

“I mean…sometimes? But I think there are two questions that need to be asked in these situations. The first being: ‘can I authentically represent the lived experience of a character with a particular background or who identifies in a certain way to the extent that I want to without fucking it up and being disrespectful?’. The second one would be, if you don’t have that background or identify in that way: ‘Sorry, what the fuck makes you think the answer to that first question is ‘yes’?’.”

“So why write them at all?” Seven asked.

“Why have Enby Alters? Because maybe, in a multiversal setting, other versions of me might have different relationships to gender? You might as well ask ‘why not give Alice more dysphoria’? Or ‘why not have us all transition at the same time and choose the same name’? Cause gender and identity are complicated, and refracted through a multiversal lens, variation makes fucking sense. I know you think Alters are just photocopied versions of you, but that’s not the internal logic behind the Local Network.”

“Yeah, actually: why is there so much variation in this slice of the multiverse?” Anna queried: “From a Many Worlds perspective, a sample of like…1500 adjacent worlds should be less variable, no?”

“Who said they’re adjacent?” Bel shrugged. “Pretty sure I positioned them as vibrationally similar. Or at least…Damien did, and by extension Helios.”

“So they’re not adjacent?” Anna raised an eyebrow.

“Stop asking for the recipe and just eat the fucking cake, Anna.” Bel smiled sweetly.

“You’re so fucking annoying sometimes.”

“Well sure. I’m you. Do you want me to keep being annoying, or do you want to move on to a question I’ll actually answer?”

“Fine. Back-burner. For now.”

“Agreed.”

“One other thing I noticed…” Anna rapped her fingernails on the table, briefly making eye contact with Bel, “Was that there wasn’t a huge amount of explicit physical description of characters. Deliberate, or…?”

“Oh, yeah. That one’s interesting. No, that was a choice. I actually really enjoy incorporating physical character descriptions, mostly because it’s a fun tightrope; going into the looks and style without being all ’Charles Dickens’ about it - "

“ - Sorry, what about Dickens?” Kade asked.

“Oh, he just…had a habit of going into a lot of very specific detail. He often used these big-ass compound sentences that sort of…broke narrative flow a bit too much for my personal taste? Your mileage may vary, I’m sure lots of people loved it.”

“Ahh, right, sure.”

“But yeah. I usually enjoy that tightrope, but I made this specific decision to avoid it. Not entirely, but more than I usually would for sure. Detailed physical descriptions of different versions of one trans person in various states of medical transition, with varying gender identities felt…honestly, sort of gross, but also besides the point. And, at a certain stage, tying trans identity too heavily into physicality does sort of inadvertently speak to transmedicalism. Like, really…unavoidably, I feel. Does that make sense? I feel as if Kade was more focussed on it than the rest of the Alters, which was also a choice I made to highlight the way that, in early transition…focussing on physical changes and potential endpoints can be something it’s easy to get incredibly stuck on.”

“Call me out, why don’t you?” Kade chuckled.

“I mean, I went through that phase, too. And it’s still something I struggle with. I’m just saying, I didn’t want to like…super formally embed that bullshit as a primary focus of the narrative, y’know?” Kade shrugged and nodded.

“Can I ask about..,” Kade tapped a finger on her chin: “At one point - in the first chapter, I think - you mentioned that I wanted transdermal estradiol because there were less contraindications with vaping?”

“Mmhmm. I remember. And?”

“Citation?” Kade raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, Yeah, sure. Why not. The main one - there were a few - that I looked at when I came to that conclusion for myself was here:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15638743/. It’s right there in the Abstract.”

“Cool. And the uh…spironolactone versus cyproterone for kidney issues thing?”

“Well, spiro is a diuretic, is the thing. Here’s an article which goes into it a bit. https://ec.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/ec/8/7/EC-19-0272.xml. Differential adverse effects of spiro versus cypro are in the Introduction. I’m specifically going for peer reviewed articles that you won’t have to pay for to see what I mean.”

“Aren’t you meant to not offer medical advice?” Seven muttered.

“I’m not. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about: everyone should do their own research, consult medical professionals before making choices and such, but…yeah, I read some fucking articles. So sue me.”

“So…you’re gonna sit here with a straight face and say that it wasn’t because you hate pickles, drinking enough water, and needing to potentially pee in public?” Olivia smirked.

“Maybe it was both, Liv? How about that.”

“Also…isn’t cyproterone associated with depression?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“And don’t you like…have that?”

“Oh, yeah, totally. But I feel like you’re asking a professional basketball player why, when they had to choose between basketball and tennis, they chose basketball. Like of course I chose fucking basketball, I’m fucking good at it.”

“Didn’t you - "

“- Hey Liv? It’s an AMA, not an interrogation, ‘kay?” Olivia just rolled her eyes and shrugged.

“So uh…” Seven smirked, tapping her fingernails on the table and making direct eye contact with Bel: “Speaking of things you put in bodies…”

“Here we fucking go…” Olivia muttered under her breath.

“Through a certain…I guess ‘meta-fictional’ lens, you yourself could be interpreted as ‘one of the Alters’. In that context…how did you enjoy writing about having sex with yourself?”

“Really?” Bel glowered.

“I mean…I kinda want to hear this too, to be fair.” Olivia seconded.

“Well look. I’m autistic. When I started transitioning and the world told me to go fuck myself, maybe I took that a little bit too literally?”

“Ha.” Olivia deadpanned.

“Okay, fine. I’ll actually address it. To be clear…it wasn’t like that. There’s a reason I didn’t write Liv and Kade actually having sex. Or Alice and Faith for that matter. I think it makes the most sense in context, but…simply, sex is a big part of transition. Not necessarily having it, but the way your experience of it changes in terms of your body and the way you view potential partners. Sex is also a big part of trauma, regardless of how much people don’t want to have that conversation.”

“Tell that to the kink community…” Anna interjected.

“Funny how your tone says you think that’s rebuttal, but it’s a hundred percent my point. People who engage in kink are…in my experience, typically pretty fucking aware of the extent to which sex and trauma…” Bel trailed off, interlinking her fingers together in front of herself.

“Okay, fair point.” Anna conceded.

“Anyway, yeah. Whether it’s aversion to it, or desire for it…the way sex actually sort of becomes about everything but sex when you have those additional, fucked up layers of complexity around it? Those situations were my way of touching on those ideas. However…thinking about it, while Olivia and Kade were very much that, Alice and Faith were more…euphemistic. More about the idea of accepting and embracing divergent parts of yourself and figuring out how to love yourself, transposed to a romantic context because yeah, there are ways in which learning to love yourself - for the first time, as an adult - maybe does feel like it’s slightly in the same emotional realm as romance? There’s softness, there: vulnerability, and curiosity, and exploration. And in a sense, the dichotomy between ‘simple’ T-for-T dynamics versus Alter-on-Alter dynamics sort of mirrors the way I think about romantic attachment within ‘chosen family’ units. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, it definitely happens, but also there’s…a certain degree of stigma and avoidance around it, because it feels like it has the potential to speak to problematic power dynamics. Which, to be fair…it can. Like Liv should have known better - "

“ - Hey. Watch it.” Olivia hissed.

“You watch it. If you’re gonna hook up with someone less experienced than you, be less of a bitch about it in post.”

“You’re the one who wrote it.”

“Yeah, but you’re still the one who did it, in context. Anyway and also…” Bel paused, glaring down the table: “Let’s not pretend that the vast majority of the world aren’t pretty regularly fucking themselves stupid. It’s not actually that weird.”

“While we’re on this, did you feel like talking about autogynephilia at all?” Anna asked, making a poor attempt of stifling a laugh.

“I might actually hate you guys.” Bel shook her head.

“What’re you gonna do, kill me again?” Anna asked innocently. Bel sighed.

“I mean…it’s not particularly worth giving a great deal of attention, I feel? We’re talking about a pathologisation of what I, personally, view as something extremely natural and normal: the ability to look at yourself, presenting as you want to present - or imagining yourself presenting that way - and managing to feel hot. Y’know? Which isn’t even necessarily sexual, really, it’s more like…alignment between how you want to look and how you do. It’s self-actualisation.”

“I mean, arguably it goes a little bit beyond that.” Anna pushed.

“Ignoring, for a moment, that it’s not real, that AGP is bullshit, debunked pseudo-science used to harm our community…are we gonna pretend cis women don’t regularly look in the mirror and feel good about what they see? That cis men don’t? Have you guys been to a gym? A club? Are we gonna pretend that not having the ability to feel that way isn’t functionally a form of body dysmorphia? We should all be able to look at ourselves and feel good; aesthetically pleasing; desirable. Further: I know that hating the way I looked pre-transition amplified my reaction to sometimes liking the way I look in the present, and I find that…deeply, profoundly unsurprising. And there’s no sexual aspect to that for me, but if there was I wouldn’t particularly give a shit. Kind of sounds…fun? I mean, as I said, the majority of people are…pretty regularly having sex with themselves, and I kind of think it’s weird and a little prudish that we pretend that’s always utterly divorced from any sense of enjoying and appreciating our own bodies. And I’m not even going to get into the way that every time I’ve heard a transphobe mention AGP, they’re absolutely, droolingly fixated on the idea of someone with a penis wearing ‘women’s clothes’ and getting an erection. As always, the obsession seems to boil down to our fucking genitals. If anyone’s fetishising anything, how is it not these absolute freaks who can’t shut the fuck up about what’s in complete strangers’ pants or under their skirts? There’s nothing wrong with liking how you look. There’s nothing wrong with getting turned on when you think you look hot, particularly when thinking you look hot - as your actual self - is a pretty fucking alien experience to you. So fuck Blanchard’s weird bullshit, and fuck the pathologisation of healthy-but-sometimes-a-little-messy normal human experiences.”

“So there’s something I really want to know. Do we mind if I completely shift focus?” Kade looked around the table. The Alters shook their heads.

“God, please shift focus.” Bel raised both eyebrows with a deep, forced inhale.

“Okay, so…references to String Theory and Quantum Mechanics aside…how do the Alters’ powers actually work?”

“Well Kade,” Bel said slowly: “It’s pretty much…String Theory and Quantum Mechanics.”

“You’re a dick. You know that, right?”

“I mean…I’ve been informed, yeah.” Bel shrugged. “Look, straight up, String Theory is a lot to talk about and I don’t really want the gaps in my understanding - like…it’s fucking String Theory - picked apart in microscopic detail. I also don’t want to give away the exact parameters of your power set and why or how you’re stronger than the other Alters. Cause like…ideally, I would like to write another one of these. I’m already part of the way into the next, and I…maybe have some pretty substantial long term plans for more. All you need to know is that I have what I think is solid internal logic for everything that’s happening, power-wise, and I’m not really too fussed about spelling it out for anyone.”

“Oh please,” Olivia snorted. “Like you weren’t just making it up on the fly.”

“Reverse psychology, shockingly, isn’t massively effective on the person writing your dialogue, Liv.” Bel countered.

“I mean, sure, if you can’t write my dialogue well enough for me to convince you, just say that.”

“Nice try.”

“Keeping in mind that I’m only really asking because I can foresee this coming up: do you worry that Kade’s kind of a Mary Sue?” Seven asked.

“Hey! If I’m one then how the fuck aren’t you?! We have the same powers!” Kade threw back.

“Ladies.” Bel sighed. “Mary Sue’s are…usually author inserts, but specifically defined as having no real weaknesses or flaws. You guys have tonnes of flaws. And just because no one knows what Kade’s weaknesses are yet - yet - doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them. Also, the accusation hinges pretty heavily on Kade being some sort of…Chosen One. And a hero. I don’t really write heroes, and I definitely don’t write Chosen Ones. I write fucked up people who try their best and usually either fail, or make things worse in the end. I like to think of Kade as…an ‘Outside Context Problem’. It’s this idea from an Iain M Banks novel called Excession. Something that’s beyond any frame of reference anyone has, or any strategy they can come up to deal with. If I’d written the story from Helios’s perspective, Kade would have been…well, I was gonna say ‘the antagonist’, but ‘eldritch abomination’ is probably more technically accurate. It’s all a matter of perspective, y’know?”

“Is that how the next book is gonna go?” Olivia queried.

“Spoilers.” Bel smirked.

“Okay, River-fucking-Song…” Anna rolled her eyes. “I think that’s getting close to time. Anyone else got anything to ask before we wrap up?” Anna asked.

“Yeah. I do actually.” Olivia shrugged. “How much of this whole…Acknowledgements section is about pre-empting that ‘The Curtains Are Blue’ thing?”

“You mean like…the question of authorial intent? Like how much of the symbolism people attribute to things in books is really what the author intended?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Well…” Bel’s eyes narrowed, drawing the syllable out over a good several seconds before continuing: “None of it really? I don’t actually care about authorial intent a great deal? Like…here’s my position. In a nutshell: If I wrote ‘the curtains are blue’, maybe that’s all I meant by it. But I could, on a meta level, be an unreliable narrator; maybe I meant more than I thought I did. And even if I didn’t, maybe it resonated with the reader beyond the intended meaning. And y’know what? That’s actually really fucking cool, the idea that someone might enjoy an authors’ work enough to find new and unintended meanings in it. It also doesn’t change what I wrote to have people speculate about the meaning behind it. No matter how much authors like Anne Rice seem to think it could.”

“She can’t sue you for that, right?” Kade grimaced.

“I mean…what wouldn’t she try to sue for? Anne Rice would sue for a fucking Snickers bar. Lestat and litigiousness - that’s what she’s known for, no? But…I think I’m safe. I’m allowed to comment on things that are massively on the public record, aren’t I?”

“Fingers fucking crossed…” Olivia shrugged.

“I guess, ultimately, I actually think the question of authorial intent misses the fucking point of literary analysis to begin with? And that’s for two reasons: first, I think if a book isn’t full to the brim with unintended meanings that the author didn’t specifically try to put there, it’s probably a really fucking boring book. And second, I think that the point of art has just as much to do with what the person consuming that art gets out of it as what the person who created it meant to elicit. Basically, super simply…I think we should let people enjoy things the way they wanna enjoy them. Let people ship non-canon relationships. Let people write dissertations on how…I don’t know, about how Battlestar Galactica was secretly an allegorical take on the AIDS crisis. Why the fuck can’t we let art be fun? Why do we have to treat authorial intent like word-of-fucking-god? That’s so fucking boring to me.”

“Might be the most ‘punk’ take on being a lit-nerd I’ve heard recently…” Olivia smirked.

“I don’t really think it’s ‘punk’. I think it’s hard to argue with. Take Lovecraft, for example: I think at this point we all know what his ‘authorial intent’ was. But we all sort of…collectively accept meanings that utterly reject the entire fucking subcutaneous layer of bigotry and xenophobia in his work, even while acknowledging that, yeah, that guy was super fucking racist.”

“Yeah. Cause he’s dead.” Olivia rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t give that sort of grace to princess black-mould-poisoning.”

“I mean…do we not think there’s a difference between interpreting art and not wanting to siphon funds to some pompous, overwrought, self-involved - "

“- Glass houses, babes…” Seven muttered.

“Yep, yeah…thanks, I hear it now. So…switching gears: all I’m saying is there’s a difference between interpreting art and helping to fund the agenda of hate of some uppity castle-dweller who manages to miss the point of her own work despite it being the most paint-by-the-numbers, on-your-knees-for-broad-appeal garbage I’ve ever had the displeasure of accidentally skimming one time before near-instantly falling asleep. A person who is looking to target marginalised people, play victim versus a demographic who had nothing to do with her self-identified trauma, and build - brick-by-brick - a world that’s just a little more horrible than the dumpster fire we’re already dealing with. Y’know?”

“Right. Fair.” Olivia nodded.

“I think this’ll be my last one.” Kade cut in: “Do you feel like you got what you wanted to from this project?”

“Oh. Um…” Bel paused, considering: “Well, I didn’t start off with any particular aim, necessarily? I just wanted to write it for me. But as it evolved, there were a couple of things I started to gravitate towards. The first was the idea that maybe someone who wasn’t familiar with transness would read it and get some insight. While I don’t speak for trans women - the fact that we’re not at all a monolith was a huge part of how Kade and Olivia’s journeys were framed - I can certainly speak for myself, and I wanted this representation of my experience to be emotionally authentic in a way that, as a byproduct at least, was informative. Even if it is more than a little embarrassing and vulnerable to put to paper, much less attempt to get published. The second…which, honestly, probably a bigger focus…was the idea that maybe some newly out trans woman might read it. That maybe she’d be a little like me. Maybe she’d be a little older. Maybe she’d be gay. Possibly autistic. Unable to find community that embraced her. Lonely and isolated. Maybe transition had cost her…really quite a lot. And maybe she’d be feeling as if the narratives of transness she was running across didn’t really represent her feelings on what she was going through. I remember reading Manhunt…Nevada…Detransition, Baby and various others, and loving them: nuanced, amazing, no complaints. There are a lot of reasons why comparing yourself to other trans girls is hazardous, and one of them is absolutely to do with how many unbelievably creative and talented girls there are out there. But when it came to books I could see myself in? The awkward early days? The…messy, tragic, lonely, gay, apocalypse-in-slow-motion of it all? I didn’t find that. So maybe this girl would find my book, and it would make her feel…even just the tiniest bit less alone in the world. I could have used that. I could have really fucking used that. If even one trans woman felt that way about it, that would be plenty for me. So…not yet is my answer, I suppose? But I’m hoping for those two things, y’know? Anyway…any other questions?” The Alters shook their heads.

“I think you’re good to close this out, Bel.” Anna nodded.

“Great.” Bel smiled. “The last thing, I guess is…to thank you guys. Writing this book has been so much fun, and so rewarding…but also incredible for my mental health. If I’m honest, the reason I really started with this project, specifically, was because I was in one of the darkest places I’d ever been. And as you can probably tell from my work, I’ve been to some fairly dark places. And the thing is, it was getting worse. It turns out, feeling like you for the first time can also mean you have to deal with feeling more generally - meaningfully, authentically, and fucking unavoidably - for the first time. I could feel it clawing through me, deeper day-by-day. And I made this resolution to myself that every time I started to spiral…I would take a little time to sit down and just write. While I’m being vulnerable, I will admit that Kade’s ‘attempt’ was pulled from actual experience. I doubt that’s massively surprising. And I don’t think there’s shame in being open about those kinds of struggles, so why not just say it out loud? I was desperate to not end up back in the sort of mental place where I saw that ‘ending’ as a possibility for me. So that’s where it all started. And I’ve spent my whole life writing - I love writing with all of my heart - but usually I agonise over planning and structuring to the point I end up with hundreds of pages of world-building and a couple of snippets, or just…half-written short stories…that kind of thing. I have a hundred stalled projects. More, probably. I assume I’m not the only writer with this bullshit problem. So…when I started this, at first it looked like journal entries…and then it looked like linked vignettes…and then structure started to almost organically take shape. I met all of you…fragments and divergences and alternate histories of me, and it helped me to work through a lot of the things I was dealing with but…it also - as pathetic as this may make me sound - helped me to deal with a lot of very intense feelings of loneliness and isolation that I hadn’t really found any other ways of dealing with that weren’t…let’s say…’Olivia coded’. The actual reason I wanted this Acknowledgements to work the way it does is that you - the others as well, but specifically you - are parts of me and the idea of holding you at arms length for any part of this - even this part - seemed…silly. Insincere. Wrong. So…with all the sincerity in the world…I love all of you, and thank you for collaborating on this story with me. I couldn’t have asked for better main characters. Truly.”

“Well.” Olivia started with a small sniff. “I feel like any non-snarky response to that would read an awful lot like you literarily jerking yourself off, so…” Olivia got to her feet.

“Dear god, Liv,” Anna shook her head, standing up along with Seven and Kade. “I guess I’ve gotta be the one to give sincerity a try. As usual. Bel…” Anna paused, moving around to the end of the table and hugging Bel around her shoulders. “We love you. Thank you for including us.”

“Thanks for not making me too two dimensional.” Seven smiled.

“So you’re admitting you were a villain, then?” Olivia raised an eyebrow.

“Fuck off, Liv. Say something useful for once.” Seven rolled her eyes.

“Fine. Bel…I love you like we love England. You kind of suck in a lot of ways, but I still miss you when you’re not around and like…you have my heart or whatever.” Olivia sighed.

“Don’t you write poetry?” Kade smirked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, but…angsty, sapphic poetry. Not…saccharine, touchy-feely poetry…” Olivia huffed.

“Bel…” Kade turned her attention to the head of the table. “The later chapters were stronger than the earlier ones, you killed off the two best characters in the book, and…I loved being a part of this. Thank you.”

“And I was here before any of the other Alters.” Anna squeezed tighter, pressing her cheek against Bel’s. “I’ve known you for decades. I’m sorry it took so long for you to get to this place, but I’m really glad you finally feel enough like ‘you’ to have started writing me again. Hopefully it wasn’t the last time.”

“It wasn’t. Promise.” Bel smiled to herself. “Next time you might even be alive for it.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice. Dick.”