A work in progress

Image by @goumbik

Heyo, lovely people. Wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever the colour of your skin or the orientation of your sexuality or gender, I hope you are safe and well. To those who are in the face of COVID-19, who are in the heart of marches and protests, I hope you are okay. What a year it’s been so far. I mean that in the most solemn manner. I had joked on the 3rd of January this year when playing Final Fantasy XV, having caught a nearly 700-pound fish that I had officially peaked for the decade. In turn, I would like to kindly request the universe that this be taken for the joke that it was.

I don’t have any specific plans for this week. I had hoped to have finished YA fantasy, Kathryn Purdue’s Bone Crier’s Moon for you lovely people, but alas, that was not to be. And so instead, I figured I would use today just to talk. Vent? Maybe. Tangent? Likely.

I see a lot of people who are condemning people for joining protests during COVID-19. On a personal note, I decided not to attend recent protests here in Canberra due to the risk, especially given I live with high-risk people; that, and I doubt that my own personal health issues would be entirely forgiving as well. Still, I’m troubled at the way so many — government officials especially — are lashing out at protestors for risking the 2nd wave that, given how competent the Australian government is in large, is not a matter of “if”, but “when”.

But why come at protestors in such a consistently harsh fashion? Why aren’t statements, instead of “They’re so reckless and dangerous for going to protests during COVID,” more along the lines of “It’s a truly terrible thing that people have to march for basic human rights during COVID”?

I saw more of these statements on the news, followed by, “A school is shut down due to probable COVID-19 case.” It’s almost as if having large groups together in confined spaces is dangerous.

On a slightly lighter note, the books I’ve read thus far, paired with the state of the world right now, have compelled me to revisit an old story. It was the closest I ever came to working toward publishing, yet I know now that it simply wasn’t the right time for it. I cannot begin to express how excited and relieved I am that it’s resurfacing now. Its messages are more critical than ever.

To summarise without spoiling its contents, it’s about 30% race, 30% the beloved rainbow community (AKA 60% discrimination and equality), 30% chronic illness, and 10% a chronically anxious young adult of colour who is quite hip with the self-deprecating humour, not at all inspired by my own beautifully fatalistic and wacky brain. That being said, I do class his ranging mental health problems as part of the chronic illness. All in a futuristic fantasy world!

I’m about 30,000 words into it. And so far, I’m pretty keen. Where it goes from here, I have rough ideas, but I’m hopeful that it re-emerging now is for a very good reason.

We need stories that confront reality but do so in a way that we can see a way out. For this story, I refer to the character Kabry, who helped inspire my article, A single voice. We need stories that are confronting and honest, but that will also leave room for hope. Even as one who loves reading and writing tragedies, it is simply not what the world requires right now. For young people, especially, it feels like our race is genuinely doomed. That is not an exaggeration, though I wish it were. The core of our largely nihilistic and self-deprecating humour stems from the belief that we’re all momentously fruit-caked. That’s why my main character, the older brother to Kabry, is the way he is. There’s more of me in him than there is in most of the characters I’ve ever drawn up. He’s gone through a lot more than I ever have, but that’s to be explored down the track.

There are so many conversations about basic equal human rights already. And as we’ve seen with the protests we’re seeing right now, they’re getting louder. But we need to keep going, to turn up the volume until that equality is forged, where people don’t lose chances of any kind purely for something over which they have no control.

But that’s all from me today. I hope everyone stays safe, healthy, and keeps talking. Silence right now is the antithesis to all our causes.

— Charis.