Kill Your Genre

I have loved science fiction for most of my life, but I finally realized it couldn't give me anything I actually wanted. In fact, I've loved science fiction for about thirty years, ever since I first saw Jurassic Park at the age of 9. A few years after college, with Obama unemployment checks keeping me stable, I surrendered and wrote a science fiction novel. I finished the first draft in four months, and yes it was hard, but I also loved it. Science fiction offers the tempo and shiny lights that hold my interest to the finish line, something literary fiction simply cannot do. (Yes, I have ADHD, what about it?) I immersed myself in SF, reading widely and then trying out my own ideas. I ended up writing five SF novels between 2008 and 2020. My transition killed this momentum. I didn't see it in the beginning, or perhaps it was a slow death, but once I started to transition, writing SF became excruciating. In 2021 and then 2022, I started and abandoned two novels, in the same way I had abandoned two lit-fic novels in 2006 and 2007. Science fiction suddenly bored me. As I had recently been immersing myself in trans literature, auto-fiction came naturally. In fits, I alternated between autobiographical essays and short fiction told in scattered genres. This culminated in a collection of pieces, published here on itch.io as Still in Both Places. You can see in it a decaying sense of SF as valuable storytelling tool, a dawning realization that if a space station can't make a story interesting, was it ever interesting? And the corollary, if you take the interesting space station story out of the space station, it can remain interesting. Back in 2008, I saw no point to literary fiction because it couldn't hold my attention. For whatever reason, gender or otherwise, I couldn't bear to write stories about life on earth. About my life. I had to escape my life. I immersed myself in stories that had nothing to do with my real life. There were no similarities, and that was the point. But now, in the process of living life, or transitioning (or perhaps those are redundant), I have come down to earth. Now, stories in space seem irrelevant. A trans girl struggling to accept herself would have a very different experience on Ceres Station in comparison to Brooklyn. The limits of my imagination here fascinate me; of course the story of a trans girl on Ceres Station could be told in such a way as to uniquely illuminate the trans experience. But to what end? It simply doesn't feel relevant as a person who lives on earth in 2026. Slice-of-life stories do feel relevant, because for a lot of young adults, they function as guidance or examples. Trans kids and teens need that more than most. I want to give them stories that make them feel seen, accepted, hopeful, and empowered. Transition has pulled me back down to earth because I finally care about all of this. I care about closeted trans kids. I care about the trans refugees fleeing across state lines. I care about every single trans person who is killed by hateful bigots. I care about queer people who can't find jobs, queer people who are forced into homelessness, queer people who battle their mental health every day. I care about you. So this is my manifesto. I am making a game for everyone I care about. I am making this game so that we can have an experience we can feel good about. I am making this to encourage us, to strengthen us, to support us, to care for us. I have forsaken science fiction and adopted slice-of-life to create a familiar and warm aesthetic, a familiar world with pleasures we know and dangers we suspect and the victories we know we are capable of. And perhaps it's just that, in the year 2026, the craziest thing I can imagine is a trans character as the star of a slice-of-life video game. (Important fine print: While the game's aesthetic and gameplay will be slice-of-life, a mystery storyline does drive the plot forward. Sorry! I like what I like.) (Ugh fine: the game is named South Fork. Steam page coming soon.)