You Stare, Speechless. Hes A CHANGELING? So Many Secrets Everywhere. It Makes You Question Everyone You

You stare, speechless. He’s a CHANGELING? So many secrets everywhere. It makes you question everyone you see, everyone you know. He always seemed so… Normal… Anger suddenly ignites in you. ‘Does EVERYONE have powers except me?!' You feel so small and helpless. Why the Hell do THEY get powers? Why do YOU get stuck with this stupid, weak body. You don’t get ANY powers, you get sick, just like any other human, you even had ASTHMA as a child! You can’t even REGENERATE! You have to where a stupid CHARM to keep magical illnesses away because you're SO UNMAGICAL THAT YOUR BODY CAN’T HANDLE THEM! You really want to punch the wall. But because you AREN’T STRONG LIKE EVERY OTHER PERSON IN THE WORLD it would break your hand. And since you CAN’T HEAL QUICKLY LIKE EVERY OTHER PERSON IN THE WORLD it would last for forever. That just frustrates you more and you stomp around for a while, just letting yourself be angry. Why is life so unfair? Why do YOU have to be weak? Why do YOU have to be human? Why can’t YOU turn into a fucking BIRD and just FLY over the stupid wall? Jr’s brother suddenly lands in front of you, “Let’s go.” You blink, “What? Where’s Jr? Why are you back so soon? I thought we were getting him? What’s going on?”

You’re leaving school when you finally get it out of him. You’ve been nagging him about that bruise all day and you finally break through. “I’m not going to leave you alone! I’m worried! Are your parents abusing you? Did someone attack you?” “No! It’s a hickey ok?!” You stop, “What…” He stops too, “What? Because I’m shy and antisocial I can’t get it on?” You stare in disbelief, then snap, “No! Because your BROTHER just came back from Werewolf HELL where he probably almost DIED and you’re missing school, not to see your brother, but to go get chicks?!” He snorts, “What? No! I’ve been hanging out with Jr, but do you expect me to follow him around and mope and cry over him twenty four/seven? He didn’t even have a hospital bed for me to cry at. He literally just used his condition as an excuse to eat a TON of food and then went around and flirted with literally anyone within arms length. Should I have followed him around and watched him make out with people? No thanks.” You open your mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. If you’re being honest, that sounds exactly like Jr… You close your mouth, then say, “What about missing school?” He shrugs and kind of grins a little shyly, “I’m pretty sure ANYONE would use any excuse to get out of school for a while…” Once again, you can’t argue. This is true. You had tried to use stubbing your toe as an excuse to miss school, so you aren’t exactly in any position to judge. You sigh, “Why couldn’t you have just TOLD me it was a hickey? Most guys would be bragging about it. I was really worried. And what if you’re lying? Now I don’t know WHAT to think…” He sighs, “I’m not lying. I’m shy and antisocial remember? I’m not just gonna brag about getting laid. That’s not cool. That’s private. It’s none of YOUR business. I shouldn't have to tell you when I’m in a relationship…” You feel shame rise in you, he’s right, and probably one of the only decent guys you know. But you didn’t know it was a hickey. And you were worried. You look down, then back at him, “You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. But I WAS worried. I didn’t even consider that it could be a hickey.” He chuckles a little, “You know what that tells me? You need a boyfriend.” You take it back. He’s not a decent guy. He’s a prick. You glare at him, “I do NOT. I’m not interested in dating. Guys are nothing but trouble." He leans back, looking offended, “I’m not trouble…” You can’t help but laugh, “YES. YOU ARE.” He grins, “But you’re not supposed to know that remember? I’m shy and antisocial.” You laugh again and head towards your house, “Oh yeah… I’ll keep that in mind…”

You’re forced, struggling, to your knees. Jr is wrestled out of the net. He bolts for the door, but is grabbed instantly. The guards slam him to the ground and you scream. Two collars are brought out and you shiver. Although you know you aren’t a werewolf, the collar is still scary. You look over at Jr. He’s struggling to get back, away from the collar, but two guards hold him still. The man snaps the collar on you. The cold metal sits heavy on your neck, giving you chills. You watch the man, waiting for something, anything. Finally, he smiles, “See? That wasn’t so bad. You’re good to go.” He takes the collar off and your focus instantly goes to Jr. A guard is wrestling a collar on him. As soon as it snaps closed he wails and thrashes. You scream and fight towards him. He writhes, struggling to wrench it off, but it’s hard when his skin is rippling and twisting. You cover your mouth as he arches his back, blood flecking his mouth. You gasp, “You’re killing him! Stop!” Jr gives a last wail and rips violently into a wolf, shuddering and shaking. You freeze, staring. He’s beautiful. Big and almost golden. His fur is long and thick, rippling with every move he makes. His eyes are still the same though, blue and very, very human. He stares at you, crouched on the floor, shivering, and whimpers. You can only stare. It’s hard to decide whether to be terrified, like you’ve been taught to be all your life, or mesmerized. Because he is very VERY definitely in control. But that doesn’t make sense. Werewolves are monsters. They CAN’T be in control. They become violent, hungry animals when they turn… The guards step forward and Jr snarls, his appearance instantly changing. His fur bristles along his back, making him look much bigger, and his lips jerk back, revealing his teeth and gums, mouth hanging open threateningly. It’s a truly terrifying sight, and you just stare as they struggle to get close to him. He snarls and snaps, not hurting anyone, but scaring them enough to back off. Once it’s decided that it’s too dangerous to come close, they retreat, grabbing guns. You instantly fight, “Wait! Don’t kill him! DON’T KILL HIM!” They raise their weapons and you scream desperately, fighting with everything you have against the guards holding you, but they fire anyway. A dozen darts strike him and he jerks back, snarling and barking wildly. You don’t know whether to scream some more, because they’re HURTING HIM, or be relieved that those weren’t real bullets. Jr stumbles and falls, eyes rolling back. You shiver, whimpering. A man looks at you, “What is she still doing here?” The guards blink, surprised, and he snaps, “Get her out! She’s been traumatized enough!” The guards scramble and grab you. You struggle a little, “Jr….” “That’s not your friend ma’am… That’s a monster…” Tears spill down your cheeks. He’s not a monster. He’s a person… You two weren’t really close, but you were JUST starting to become friends… You don’t want to leave him… But you’re not strong. You’re not fast. You have no special power. Nothing you can pull out of thin air to solve the problem. You’re dragged out of the tower, down to a car. They put you in the back and you curl up, “He’s not a monster! He’s my friend! He wouldn’t-” Your voice breaks. Would he? Honestly… You don’t know. Maybe not while human. But even as a wolf he seemed so…. Human…. But that could just be your judgement too… You don’t know what to think anymore… You rest your forehead on your knees. You need time to think. You need to tell his brother, warn him… ‘But if he’s a wolf… Doesn’t he need to be seperated? He’s dangerous….’ You hug your legs tighter. Why does life have to be so complicated?

The next few months pass in a blur. You and Jr’s brother go to the wall often, so he can see Jr. Unfortunately, you don’t HAVE any powers, so you can’t go over the wall. You wait outside instead, and he tells you how he’s doing and delivers messages back and forth. School seems almost pointless, but you do it anyway, not paying attention to anything you’re doing. You don’t even know if you’re passing any of your classes. You don’t really pay attention to much of anything, except visiting and frequently questioning Jr’s brother on how things are going with his dad. Sometimes you think you’re annoying him with so many questions, but you can’t exactly do anything else, so you’re left to worry and ask questions… You’re about to go insane with not being able to do anything when you see a car driving slowly down the road. Cars are fairly rare, considering how expensive they are. Most people walk everywhere. Everyone moves out of the way and your heart stops when you glance through the window. Jr… He’s slumped in the passenger seat, head hanging, dirty hair laying limp, covering his face. He’s still in the same clothes he went in, but they’re ripped and filthy. He’s skinny, not healthy looking. You run after the car, following it all the way to his house. You feel tears of relief burning your eyes. He’s ok… Well… Not really, but he WILL be ok… You run up to it when it stops, not even flinching when his dad steps out of the car. You stop at the passenger door, but his dad pushes past you, “Who do you think you are?” You flush, “Oh… Sorry… I’m… A friend of his… I’ve been really worried about him…” His dad snarls, “Well he doesn’t feel well right now. Come back later.” You glare, “I want to make sure he’s ok.” “He’s fine.” “I don’t know that-” “Dad…” Jr’s voice cuts across the argument and you realise he’s opened the door. You and his dad look at him at the same time. He says, “She’s fine. She’s a friend…”, stepping out. He’s a lot stronger than he looks. He’s thin and dirty and his eyes are bloodshot, but he doesn’t seem to have any problem standing. He smiles at you, “I didn’t expect you to be so worried about a monster…”

Jr glares, “Look down there! Tell me what you see! Where is ALL that food going then?!” “How do you know this? Who told you about this?” Jr swallows and looks away, then looks back, “I had a friend… He was a changeling. He got put in there, but he used to sneak letters out to me...” Your heart speeds up a little, “Used to?” He nods, looking bitter, “They found out. I had got to where I came up here often. I watched it happen…” Your heart jumps to your throat and you barely get out, “Watched what happen?” He points, “They dragged him to the edge of the city. Shot him in the head. They just left him there for the clean up crew to pick up…” You turn your head away. There's so much to process… You look back at him, “I don’t understand. Why would they be MEAN to them? I understand containing them, but it just doesn’t seem realistic that they’d just torture an entire species unnecessarily…” Jr shrugs in defeat, “It’s easier to control a broken people, rather than a thriving nation. If they were strong, they could break out. Better to beat them down and starve them and let them die…” Tears prick at your eyes and you turn away quickly, looking back out, “But there are children out there…” Jr snorts, “Baby monsters you mean? Well, I mean, I’m sure at least half are werewolves. The rest are changelings, mimics, anything that can transform into a wolf. Even if they’re in full control while changed. Even if the moon doesn’t affect them. If any wolf DNA is in you, you’re classified a monster.” You blink away your tears. You will NOT cry in front of Jr. Though this IS horrible. You wish there was some way you could help them. But you know storming around yelling at people isn’t going to change anything. You have no powers to speak of. You’re probably the closest to human that exists. You don’t even have super speed, one of the most basic powers out there, that almost everyone has.You wouldn’t stand a chance against anyone. You’d just end up in jail, stuck, or dead, and then REALLY not stand a chance… Helplessness wells up in you and you lean over the wall, trying to distract yourself. You look for anything interesting. Livestock, trees, anything that's not the people. You can feel Jr's intense stare burning into you. You refuse to look at him. Suddenly a strong gust of wind sweeps by and you scream as it knocks you off balance. You topple over the wall, limbs flailing. “NO!!!” Your desperate wail is snatched away by the wind…

I have to agree. I write and many of my works are BASED around the complexity of human nature and how indecisive "right" and "wrong" are. I come from a Christian family and had considered writing Christian books, but ran into the same block. With Christian books there was this expectation for it to be perfect and clean and pure. It's simply unrealistic. I don't believe in completely good characters or completely bad characters. All of my characters have some flaw or another. I don't believe in a perfect world and the most gripping and intriguing stories I've read have been about people with demons and internal struggles of their own. Personaly, I think the ideology of a perfect character is, well, childish. The world is so complex. You can't put people in categories of "good" and "bad". Maybe a few, but the majority is in the smudgy grey area in between. And those are the ones I'm most interested in. How they think, how they act, how would they react in this situation? You don't know because they're not automatically going to do what's "right" or what's "wrong". They have their own ideals, instincts, and impulses. That's what makes us human and that's beautiful and interesting and I'll never stop being amazed by how complex people are as a whole.

I’m really nervous to write about this but

When I was younger, I read a lot of Christian books. In high school, I wrote a paper on Christian literature, specifically, what it is about Christian literature that makes it often flatter and less compelling than other genres. I’m not saying it all sucks, but I am saying that somehow, I’ve noticed through my life that Christian books suck more than their secular counterparts on average. I found them to often be juvenile, one-dimensional and derivative, and I didn’t think it had to be that way. I didn’t think that being Christian made a book bad, but I observed that the genre was stuffed with a lot of bad books, and the bad books were far worse than bad books outside the category. 

I’m not intending to start a discussion about Christian literature; I’m not alone in feeling this way or noticing this phenomenon if you believe it’s a thing. Online, you can read a lot of articles discussing the same thing: that Christian lit tends to be lower quality. So I wanted to know why. 

To answer the question, I looked at interviews of Christian authors and submission guidelines for Christian publishers. I wished to understand the intent behind writings in the genre and what might lead to the difference in quality. And what I found was very illuminating. 

Essentially, many Christian authors and publishers feel that: 

1. their books have a responsibility to promote morality in their readers, and authors are somewhat responsible for the moral fiber of their readers  

2. there has to be a strong delineation between “moral” and “immoral” behavior in books 

3. many topics either can’t be addressed at all or must be very clearly pointed out as “bad” if they are 

4. certain topics and ideas ought to be brought up in a book and pointed out as good as part of the purpose or meaning of the book

The conclusion I came to was that these ideas were resulting in flat, one-dimensional characters and dull plots. The responsibility of promoting moral integrity, and having to make absolutely sure that nothing you write could condone or promote immoral behavior, was of paramount importance. 

And what that caused was preachiness, one-dimensionality, a lack of compelling moral conflict, flat characters, and intellectually numbing stories. 

Why am I talking about this? 

Because a lot of the ideas I’ve been seeing spread around in writeblr and in the online writing and reading communities as a whole are identical. 

A lot of the posts I see online now about writing are almost exact echoes of the ideas I wrote about in my paper. 

Nowadays, I see posts constantly urging people to think about why they want to write their stories, and whether they are good or helpful or edifying. I see authors being slammed for not condemning characters with disgusting beliefs hard enough. I see people being dragged for liking characters that are not morally and ideologically pure. I see posts telling people to approach any difficult topic with extreme caution and crisp, unmistakable condemnation. Media is widely vilified when its fandom becomes toxic or nasty, assumed to be at fault for the moral fiber of its fans.

I see authors and publishers advertising their books as “feminist”, as if that makes any sense at all (is the author feminist? Does it just handle female characters well? Are the characters feminist? Is it focused on women’s issues?). I open a book and see poorly-integrated lines of dialogue dropping ideas about prejudice or gender that seem like a Tumblr post or part from a nonfiction book on racism inserted directly into a character’s mouth. I don’t think feminism is bad. I think feminism is great. And I don’t think talking about prejudice or gender is bad. I think these things need to be talked about. I definitely don’t think these ideas can’t be expressed in fiction. On the contrary; I think fiction is one of the best ways of expressing important ideas. 

But, I see some kind of preoccupation with the ideas your writing promotes, prominently including the idea that you must promote and you must condemn certain ideas, and that everything you write makes a statement about morality, and you’re responsible for edifying your audience and making them better people. And it’s really, really familiar. 

The conclusion that my paper came to is that you can’t clean up the reality of humanity. You can’t make the messiness of existence crisp and clear so you can feed your readers the ideas you want them to absorb bite by bite. You can’t have light without darkness, and you can’t have either without shades of gray. 

In life, racist people will not always be obviously horrible. (Even though sometimes they are…) Sometimes they will be people who love their spouses and kids and are generally “nice” and adopt dogs and love kittens, and they will still be racist. Sometimes even “good” people will say or do racist things and have to realize their mistakes and then make mistakes again and have to realize THOSE mistakes. Sometimes getting out of ideas you grew up hearing is long and difficult and you have to catch your brain repeating them even years after you tried to change. Racism can be passive, subtle, it can exist in people who are “good” in some ways. Sometimes people make progress toward changing but still have problems. How do we show this in books? Is it an author’s responsibility to solve all this and sort out everything? 

Is it racist for a racist character who is seeking redemption  to not have entirely overcome their prejudices by the end of a book? Is it the author’s responsibility to make sure racist behavior in the book is clearly labeled? Is it a reflection of the author’s views if a character says something racist? 

Note that I’m asking these questions. I’m definitely open to and would like perspectives from other people on this, people of color foremost and especially. The idea I am exploring is, does giving an author the responsibility of making sure their book clearly and unequivocally promotes certain ideas and condemns others impair them? Could it make it more difficult to address the ideas they want to? 

When I analyzed Christian literature, the conclusion I had to reach was that it does. I found christian lit as a whole to be excessively black-and-white, simplistic, shy of tackling anything with complexity, and almost dishonest about human nature. Is there an analogy in this situation? 

In life, relationships aren’t always pure and unproblematic. People don’t fall neatly into “people who have never done anything to hurt their partner” and abusers. People can sometimes have problems in their relationships and have to change their behaviors to preserve their relationships. Relationships have difficulties and arguments. Sometimes a person needs to change or become better in order to have a healthy relationship. Sometimes a relationship can be unhealthy without being abusive, and sometimes relationships are abusive. Must the author draw lines about “toxicity” and “problematicness” in super clear neon spray paint so people know the difference? 

These arguments come up about all sorts of morality-related things in books. And on some level I agree, you shouldn’t promote racism, and you should be careful and sensitive about portraying some things, but I am also extremely apprehensive about certain aspects of this culture that has sprung up. 

It’s really almost totally identical to what I noticed about Christian literature, and imo there it has done a lot of damage. I don’t really believe that authors are totally past being responsible for damage their ideas do, quite the opposite. But there is this expectation of dictating what’s bad and what’s good on a very clear level. 

That was part of the problem i noticed in Christian literature, the teaching of ideas rather than forcing readers to consider them. 

I’m not trying to talk over anybody at all, esp with things about racism, I’m white after all. And I really urge and ask my white followers and people-who-see-this-post to listen to the opinions, ideas and feelings of people of color who reply on the topic of racism. What I really want is everybody to consider this: is it an author’s job to make sure all “bad” and “good” things in their book are clearly delineated? If not, what is the best practice for an author? If not, might this cause problems? The culture I am seeing in the writeblr community seems to hold that it is, and rejection of redemption for villains, morally ambiguous situations and characters, addressing of complicated topics, and portraying anything “bad” without making absolutely certain that it’s clearly wrong is growing. 

Personally, I have a bad feeling about it. 

Thoughts?